Dry Kind of Love
by tanith
Summary: You can run, but you can't hide. S/B Futurefic.
1. Prologue

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 1/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there, through the ends of seasons 5/2.

DISCLAIMER: Several of these characters belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Fox, etc. The rest are mine, but they can have them as long as they agree to do exactly what I want with Spike on the show, and possibly let me keep him afterwards.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I hate tons of exposition at the beginning of a story. Everything will be explained in it's own due time. More stuff will start happening, too; just think of these first couple of chapters as the calm before the storm. Oh, and BTW, the title of the story is taken from the song "Sweetest Thing," by U2.

AUTHOR'S NOTE 2: I wrote this last summer, and am working on an edit of it, in preparation of a sequel that will, I hope, be coming soon. I hope this part still holds up after all these months, and that with so many original characters, I don't veer too far into Mary Sue-dom. They're fun to write, though. ;-)

*************

Zoe Barnet runs up the stairs to the third floor laughing, her fingers feeling for the solidity of the walls for balance, leaving splotched fingerprints on the white paint. Roger Waxman races up behind her in a last feeble attempt to overtake her, but Zoe reaches the landing first and spins around to face him while he is still three steps away.

"Ha! Beat you!" she yells triumphantly, leaning back against the wall, a smug grin on her face.

Roger slumps up the last three steps. "Only because I forgot to take my socks off. I kept slipping."

"You're just slow." Zoe sticks out her tongue at him. She slides her back down the wall and lands with a thump on the floor, her legs splaying out in front of her. Roger plops down next to her.

"You just cheat," he says.

She whacks his arm playfully, and her whacks her back, but then stops, his gaze caught by the trap door in the ceiling above their heads, a two by two white square with a thin silver handle.

"What's up there?" Roger asks.

"Huh?" Zoe follows his outstretched finger. "Oh that? Just the attic." She turns to her friend, grinning. "When we moved in, my dad found a whole bunch of used bedpants up there."

Zoe is disappointed when the expected expression of disgust does not spread across her friend's features. Instead, Roger merely scrunches up his nose, inquisitively. "What are bedpants?" he asks.

Zoe finds herself grinning again. "Well, the guy who lived here before us, Mr. Drake, he was 103 when he died, and before that, he was really sick and couldn't get out of bed for anything, not even to go to the bathroom. So he had these special pants..."

"Ewww!" Roger makes a face. "Why did he keep them?"

Zoe shrugs. "I dunno. He was a weird old guy. When we moved in, there were also a bunch of handwritten notes tacked all over the place that said things like, This is the bookcase,' This is the pantry.' And there were like forty layers of linoleum on the kitchen floor. My dad spent over two days just scraping it up."

Roger is still fixated on the trap door. "So what's up there now?"

Zoe shrugs again. "Junk?"

A gleam appears in Roger's eyes. "You wanna check it out and see?"

She does not want to check it out and see. Dread settles in the pit of Zoe's stomach; at 12, she's still afraid of the attic and the basement, and after dark, even her closet seems sinister. But she will not allow herself to appear cowardly in front of Roger.

"Okay, sure," she says. "My mom keeps a stepladder in the kitchen. We can use that."

"We have to go back downstairs?" Roger whines.

Zoe rolls her eyes. "Well, you can see if you can reach the handle by standing on your tippy toes," she says sarcastically.

Roger sighs and pulls off his socks. "Fine, we'll get the ladder. But this time," he says, standing, "I'll beat you downstairs!" And he leaps off down the steps before Zoe has even had a chance to get up off the floor.

"Cheat!" she yells after him, but she trots down the steps anyway, still grinning.

*************

The attic is small and musty, the roof of the house sloping in to make it barely more than a crawlspace. It smells, Zoe thinks, rather like cooked cabbage. She swings her flashlight in a slow arc around the room as Roger pulls himself up through the trap door behind her, his own flashlight clattering loudly against the splintered wood floor. Zoe is glad she remembered to put her shoes back on.

"There's really not much up here," she says to Roger, who has also begun to peer about with his flashlight. "See? Just a bunch of old boxes."

"Yes, but what's in them?" Roger says mysteriously.

"As I said before, probably junk."

"But we won't know before we check, will we?" Roger smiles wickedly and squats before a box. He holds the flashlight between his teeth and rips off the long brown strip of masking tape.

Zoe decides there's nothing better to do than to follow suit. She walks over to another box and pulls off the tape.

Roger has pulled a partially deflated basketball out of his box. He holds it up for Zoe to see. "Obviously a priceless family heirloom!" he says. He chucks the ball over his shoulder; it makes a sad fwump when it hits the floor. "And this!" Roger continues, struggling to lift a heavy, old typewriter. "A historical artifact of unspeakable value."

Zoe crinkles her nose at what she has pulled out of her box: a large ceramic horror, possibly the ugliest vase on the face of the earth. "I think that this is all nothing more than yard sale rejects."

She puts the vase back in her box and stands, shakily. The darkness is starting to get to her; she can feel the blackness that lives in the corners seeping closer, like smoke, like fog, ready to consume her the moment she drops her guard. "Let's go back downstairs," she says, trying to hide the pleading in her voice. "I'm hungry," she adds. It seems like a logical excuse.

Roger ignores her, clamoring to his feet and heading over to one of the corners of the room, where it's darkest. He shines his flashlight down on a large, black object. "Cool! Check this out!"

Zoe walks over slowly, clutching her flashlight. The skin on the back of her neck burns, pins and needles. "Hmm?" she says quietly.

"It looks like a treasure chest!" Roger says with enough enthusiasm for the both of them. The end of his flashlight goes into his mouth again. "Here, help me get this open."

Zoe fingers the small silver cross she has worn since she was a baby, her poker tell, her single nervous habit, but she kneels beside her friend anyway. The chest is huge and wooden with a large gold lock; it *does* look like a treasure chest. Roger is pulling on the lock ineffectually, so Zoe pushes his hand away, an expression of scorn plastered on her face to mask the fear.

"Not like that, silly," she says. She plucks a thin metal clip from her mane of wavy brown hair and inserts it into the lock. After only a couple of seconds of maneuvering, the lock clicks open. The expression of awe on Roger's face is enough to make Zoe smile for real.

"Where did you learn how to do that?"

Zoe shrugs nonchalantly. "My dad taught me."

Roger looks at her incredulously. "Your dad?" he starts to ask, but grows silent as, with a creak, Zoe forces back the lid of the trunk.

Zoe is half expecting the chest to emit a deep orange glow, like a mystical object in an Indiana Jones movie, and bask her and Roger in golden light. Either that, or a large swarm of bats. Instead, a small cloud of dust wafts ups and fills the air, leaving Roger coughing, and then disperses. And the contents of the trunk sit before them, in all their mundane glory.

"Aw, it's nothing but more junk," Roger laments. He gets up and moves to the other side of the attic, but Zoe stays on her knees and shifts through the trunk's contents. Her Nancy Drew-reading instincts tell her that no one, not even her over-protective and paranoid parents, would bother to lock a trunk entirely filled with old clothes, as this one appears to be.

Her hand stops moving as it comes across the somehow comforting texture of worn leather. She pushes away the other clothes and lifts out a long black leather duster. She holds it to her face and breathes in its scent, which reminds her of baseball gloves and cigarette smoke. Why would such a nice coat be stored away in the attic? Even if her parents don't want it any more, she could still wear it. She pictures herself walking down the street at night with this coat flapping behind her like a cape, and she grins. She would look so cool...

She has nearly made up her mind to bring the coat back downstairs with her when she hears a door slam from far away and her mother's voice calling, stretching up three flights of stairs and through the trap door into the attic.

"Zoe! Roger! I'm home! I brought lemonade!"

"Crap!" Zoe drops the coat and slams the trunk shut. "Hurry, we have to get downstairs! If she catches us up here I'll be in so much trouble!"

Roger doesn't argue; he is already halfway down the ladder. Zoe shimmies through the trap door after him, pulling it shut behind her. She tucks the stepladder into the corner of the playroom's closet; she'll have to sneak it back downstairs later when her mom is distracted.

Unlike now, since her mom seems pretty focused. Anne Barnet's feet are pounding up the stairs and she is calling Zoe's name, an edge of worry creeping into her voice. "Zoe? Where are you?"

Zoe darts down the steps and meets her mother on the second floor landing. Relief floods Anne's face.

"Sorry, mom," Zoe says. "I didn't hear you. Roger and I we're playing on the computer with the headphones on."

Roger appears on the stairs behind them. "Headphones," he says.

"You guys should get outside some," Anne says. "But if you want, I can give you some lemonade first."

"Lemonade sounds great, mom," Zoe says, grinning from the natural high that comes with getting away with something just barely. She and Anne and Roger walk down the last flight of stairs together, all three smiling broadly for their own private reasons.

Only later, after Roger has gone home, and Zoe's dad has returned from the library, and they have all eaten supper, and Zoe is staring at herself in the mirror as she brushes her teeth, does she realize that she never found out what was so special about the contents of the trunk that it should be padlocked. As she slips between the covers and her parents kiss her goodnight, Zoe vows to go back up to the attic soon, to face the darkness and find out the truth. Tomorrow, she thinks. The stepladder's still on the third floor; it would be fairly easy to sneak up there when no one's looking. Tomorrow she'll go back up there and she'll find out.

But tomorrow she and Sarah go swimming at the town pool, and then they meet Roger at the Ben Franklin and they end up at his house, where they gorge themselves on the penny candy they bought. And the summer days all fade into one another, and then school starts, and even though Zoe always means to go up to the attic and check, she never does.

Pretty soon, she forgets all about it.

*************

TBC


	2. Chapter One

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 2/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Very minor for "Earshot."

DISCLAIMER: Same as before, but amended thusly: The town of Middlebury belongs to itself. The deep emotional scars it has left me with are mine. They're up for grabs, though, if you want em.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Patience, please! I'm still setting up our heroes' calm little world before shredding it to pieces. At least I've thrown in some (hopefully) recognizable characters by now, and some yummy foreshadowing, too...

************* 

The dream is always the same.

She wakes on a bed of cold, hard stone. She looks down at herself; she is clothed in a long dark dress, pale wrists and hands and ankles and feet jutting out from beyond the rich fabric. She drops off the stone platform onto the ground, and pads silently across the room, the edges of which shimmer and mist and remain out of sight. Still, she walks forward with purpose, rounding a corner and finding herself in a sterile white bathroom. She places her hands on either side of the porcelain sink and looks up. The white tiled wall reflects back at her; the mirror is filled with empty white space, barren, with nothing in between the wall and the glass.

She has no reflection.

And with that realization, she wakes.

*************

By now, Zoe is so used to the dream that it no longer bothers her. Much. It still makes her nervous if she thinks about it too long, but she has grown accustomed to not thinking about it, and so she doesn't. There is far too much else to think about anyway. Like APs. And finals. And colleges. And Roger...

Zoe sighs and rolls over in bed, smushing her hair down with the back of her pillow. It's unusually warm for a Vermont May, and Zoe shifts uncomfortably under her sheets, her bare legs breaking free to caress the cool breeze drifting in the open window. Last year this time, there was still snow on the ground. Global warming, she thinks. A sign of the coming apocalypse.

She glances over at the clock on the bedside table. The glowing red numbers read 3:55. Through the walls, Zoe can faintly hear her father snoring. She sighs; she knows she will get no more sleep tonight. Resigned, she reaches over and flicks on the lamp. By her bed is a worn copy of "Neverwhere." She flips it open to her favorite part and begins to read.

*************

"You snore like a broken weed wacker," Zoe informs her father the next morning at breakfast.

William raises his eyes from the pages of The Burlington Free Press, and his glasses slip down the length of his nose. "Do I now?"

"I think it's more comparable to a rusty chainsaw, actually," Anne says. She leans against the island and spoons a cluster of Fruit Loops into her mouth. Sometimes she eats at the table with William and Zoe, but mostly she prefers to stand. The entire family is always alive with nervous energy; none of them can stay seated for long. Zoe has been teased more than once about how much her dad paces when he teaches.

The teasing is clearly the biggest disadvantage to having both of one's parents be teachers. And one at each school, too, Zoe has often thought ruefully, so there's no escaping. When she was in elementary school, Zoe was purposely not placed in her mom's kindergarten class, but once in high school, it was inevitable that she would have to take one of her dad's classes. There was only one 11th grade AP English class. Zoe wanted to take it. William taught it. End of story.

"I'll try not to embarrass you too much, luv," he had told her when the counselor had given her the news. "And likewise, you'll do the same for me."

He had smiled at her and she had smiled back. "Does put me at a disadvantage, though," she had told him. "Means I can't write any revealing stories about my family."

"I might specially request those."

Zoe smiles at the memory. "I think I feel my next reflective piece coming on," she says. "My Dad, The Human Outboard Motor.'"

"That's funny," William says, flipping the page of his newspaper casually. "I think I feel some creative grading coming on, too." He mimes drawing a big fat "F" on an imaginary paper in the air.

Anne laughs, and plops her bowl down in the sink. As she turns on the faucet, she checks her wrist watch. "Uh oh, folks, we're all going to be late again."

"You know what's not fair?" Zoe grumbles as she swings her backpack up onto her shoulder. "We might all be late, but I'm the only one who gets detention."

"Life's not fair, pet," William says, reaching over his daughter to snag a last sip of tea. "But at least you never have to worry about getting a ride to school."

That was true, Zoe decided as she headed out the door. So there was at least one advantage to having both her parents be teachers.

*************

Cafeterias tend to be loud and hot and soaked with the stench of burning grease, and Middlebury Union High School's cafeteria is no exception. The cafeteria is as old as the school, dating back to the early 1950s, and the only updates it has been given since then are a new layer of linoleum on the floor and four new drinking fountains. Zoe sits in the corner near the only one of the four that is still working, cutting her slice of pizza into pieces with a plastic knife and fork. It's too slimy to eat any other way.

"I think they're trying to kill us," Roger says, finishing the last bite of his plate-size chocolate chip cookie. He holds the plate itself up in front of his face; the grease from the cookie has turned the white paper murky grey and left it nearly transparent. "I mean, I can practically see through this thing."

Sarah makes her patented "eww" face at Roger. "And that is precisely why I bring my *own* lunch," she says, taking a large bite of her homemade sandwich and gloating at her companions.

Zoe takes a thoughtful sip of Country Time lemonade. "You know," she says, "once, when my uncle Alex was visiting, he started telling me this gonzo story about how his high school cafeteria lady tried to put rat poison in the Jell-O, but then my mom gave him The Look and he shut up."

"You don't mess with the lady when she's got The Look," Roger confirms.

"But you don't think it's really true, do you?" Sarah asks, scrunching up her nose. "About the cafeteria lady and the Jell-O?"

Zoe considers for a moment before answering. "No. Uncle Alex is full of it. He used to try to pull quarters out of my ear and all that crap." She pushes the plate of half-eaten pizza away. "I can't take any more of this. It tastes like burnt rubber." She stands and walks over to the garbage can and starts to scrape off her tray. "Can you believe my dad actually likes this stuff?" she asks over her shoulder.

"Maybe compared to the food in England it's really good," Roger suggests.

"Then I pity the British."

"I don't pity them a bit," Sarah says, as she rises to dispose of the remnants of her lunch. "Least not the women. They've got themselves a whole country full of men who talk like your dad." Her eyes grow misty.

"Sarah!" Zoe stares at her friend, aghast. "That's disgusting! Stop it!"

"I'm only kidding," Sarah says, recovering slightly. But her cheeks are still so red that she has to turn away.

Roger is watching them from the table, an expression of barely contained laughter smothering his face. Zoe sits back down across from him, her head in her hands.

"God. It's bad enough to have Kelly and Emily and their minions, all of whom otherwise hate me, trying to get placed in my group for projects just so that they can come over to my house and make up lame excuses to repeatedly go into his study. And then it's like," she pitches her voice higher to mimic the Kelly and Emily minions, "Oh, hi, Mr. Barnet! I think I left a book in here, let me bend over in my skanky top right in front of you and pretend to look for it!'" She fixes Sarah with a steely gaze. "I really don't need that from you, too."

Sarah sits down next to her friend but still doesn't look at her. "Jeeze, sorry."

"Oh, come on, Zoe!" Roger supresses his laughter long enough to say. "It's not as if your dad sees it as anything other than ridiculous. Besides, he's so into your mom it's scary." He leans in low over the table, grinning. "Remember that time on the camping trip when we caught them--"

Zoe slams her hands over her ears and starts humming, loudly. "I'm not listening to this!" she yells between bars of "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts." "Must we bring up everything that makes me want to hurl?"

"Well, we could talk about the food again..." Sarah says.

"Arrgh! That's it! I'm going to class!" Zoe says and storms away.

Roger and Sarah look at each other for a moment before going after her. Roger reaches her first and taps her on the shoulder.

"Er," he says. "We all have class together. Remember? It's called AP English, your dad teaches it, Kelly and Emily sit up front and bat their eyelashes at him...sound familiar?"

Zoe freezes in her tracks, her shoulders tense. Then she spins around and kisses Roger hard on the lips.

"I hate you," she says as the kiss breaks. She turns on here heel and walks the rest of the way to class, smiling in spite of herself.

Sarah approaches Roger who is standing completely still, grinning like an idiot.

"You're grinning like an idiot," she tells him.

Roger just watches Zoe's retreating form, still smiling. "We should really fight more often."

*************

TBC


	3. Chapter Two

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 3/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Patience, please! I'm still setting up our heroes' calm little world before shredding it to pieces. And the poetry stuff (besides being slightly amusing, IMO) does come into play later. Really. Oh, fine. Just skip it if it bores you.

*************

Being in her father's class is far from easy for Zoe, even if she were able to ignore the Kelly and Emily factor. Because she has to deal with William both at school and at home, if she misbehaves it will come back on her double. Furthermore, he refuses to let his daughter off easy, perhaps holding her to an even higher standard than the rest of his students. And worst of all, even after eight months, she still slips sometimes and calls him dad instead of Mr. Barnet. Kelly and Emily just love that.

And today is shaping up to be one of the less good days. As she enters the classroom, still flushed from kissing Roger, William rises from his desk - around which Kelly and Emily are huddling, Zoe notices with displeasure - and approaches her.

"You're ready for your presentation, right luv?" he asks, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. Behind her, Kelly and Emily laugh giddily.

"Of course," Zoe lies, while her mind screams, what presentation? And then it comes back to her: she was to pick a poem and analyze it, and then present the poem and the analysis to the class. Only somehow, she forgot. Why can't you remind me of these things when there's still something I can do about it? she thinks. "It's not like I need you to remind me of these things," she says.

"Of course not." William walks back over to his desk, over which Kelly is now leaning, exposing her breasts suggestively. "Girls," he says, through slightly clenched teeth, "why don't you both take your seats?"

Zoe takes her seat as well, desperately trying to recall any poem she might have accidentally memorized, as she accidentally memorizes everything from song lyrics to TV commercials, and decide whether she can use it. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"? No, too obvious. This was Vermont, for christ's sake, half the class probably chose to do Robert Frost. "Hanging Fire"? Did she actually have all of that memorized?

She is interrupted from her reverie by the arrival of Roger and Sarah. Roger smiles at her, uncharacteristically shy, and sits at his assigned desk across the room from her. Even though they had been going out officially for over two months, it is still weird for both of them, and perhaps weirder still for Sarah. She takes her seat next to Zoe, an unreadable expression on her face.

"My, if it isn't PDA girl," she says, not unkindly.

"My, if it isn't British accent fetish girl," Zoe replies, a bit too loudly. Sarah looks up at William, mortified, but he is writing on the wipe board and not paying any attention. But then Zoe turns to her friend and says, much more quietly, "Did you remember to prepare your presentation?"

"Crap!" Sarah swears under her breath. "Tell me yours is all ready."

"It will be."

Sarah bangs her head on the desk. "Great." The first bell rings and the rest of the class begins shuffling in. "Why does your dad have do everything in alphabetical order? And why do we have to be B's? Why should Roger have all the luck?" She sticks her tongue out at Roger, who gives her a strange look from his place across the room. "You don't deserve to be a W!" she yells.

"Shut up, Sarah," Zoe says, and is pleased when her friend complies, even though it had more to do with the fact that William looked over his shoulder and arched his eyebrow at her. "I'm trying to concentrate."

The second bell rings and William turns to face the class. He leans against the old wood lectern on which his attendance book is spread and speaks to the students as he checks off their names. "First the good news. We only have to deal with each other for another 43 days and then we're all free for the whole summer." Several people cheer. William grins. "Believe me, you lot are nowhere near as happy as I am. But sadly, we have the inevitable bad news to contend with as well. Starting Monday, we enter AP prep hell. So prepare yourselves for cramming and that weird buzz you get from too much pizza and Dr. Pepper." He takes off his glasses and fixes the class with a cold stare that Zoe is sure he must think of as intimidating. "And study your vocab words! Honestly, they really do help."

The glasses go back on and Zoe can feel William about to shift subjects. Talk more about the vocab, she prays.

"And now we're going to start our poetry presentations," William says. Since Avery's conspicuously absent, we'll begin with Zoe."

"Take a really long time!" Sarah whispers as Zoe rises from her seat. Zoe shoots her a dirty look and takes her place at the front of the class. She looks at her father, back behind his desk and watching her expectantly. Then she takes a deep breath, and begins to recite.

Death is before me today

Like the recovery of a sick man

Like going forth into a garden after sickness

Death is before me today

Like the odor of myrrh

Like sitting under a sail in a good wind

Death is before me today

Like the course of a stream

Like the return of a man from the war galley to his house

Death is before me today

Like the home a man longs to see

After years spent as a captive

Once she finishes, Zoe stands dumbly for a second. Most of her classmates are either staring at her with glazed-over eyes, or ignoring her all together. Roger is still smiling at her rather shyly, and Sarah mouths "Good cover!" when she looks her way. Her father sits silently in the back of the room, a small twist of a smile playing on the corner of his mouth. She finds she cannot read his expression at all. Just open your mouth and start analyzing, she thinks. So she does.

"Um, there have been many poems written about death, but what made me choose this one is the fact that it presents death in a totally different manner than most. To most people and poets - not to imply that they are two separate groups," she adds, and she watches as her dad's odd little half smile grows, "death is regarded as the inevitable end to the wondrous journey that is life; it is viewed as something to dread, something to attempt to avoid, even though one cannot. For most, death is the ultimate enemy."

She pauses, partially for effect, and partially to gain a moment to figure out where she is going to go next. Rhetorical devices, she thinks. Now is the time to start blathering on about metaphors.

"But not in this poem," Zoe continues. "This poem is essentially a group of similes - death is like the recovery of a sick man,' death is like the course of a stream' - that make up the underlying metaphor: death is the natural end to life, death is the rest and relief one finally achieves at the end of their journey. It seems that the poet is almost anticipating his death, because he longs for release. It is an interesting and not often explored point of view."

Again, she pauses. Just keep going, she thinks. You're almost there, almost there!

"Er, other elements of the poem, such as the structure, seem less important to me. While the stanzas and lines are all approximately the same length, this does not strike me as a particularly conscious choice on the part of the poet. Of course, in poetry, the selection of almost every word involves conscious choice," again, William favors her with an odd smile, and she wonders what was so funny about what she said, "but this element still does not have much to do with the meaning or power of the poem in my opinion.

"Elements of the tone, however, do. This poem uses very simple, sparse language, quite intentionally. It has a very soft tone, and when I read it, it calls to my mind the image of a man on his deathbed, explaining, in a whisper to the loved ones around him, why he is not afraid of his approaching death. The tone speaks so strongly of bravery and acceptance in the face of the terrifying unknown and usually unacceptable that it really serves to strengthen the poem's metaphor. The tone enables the poet's unconventional ideas to be expressed with a sense of truth."

Home stretch! she thinks, and finishes off in a last rush of air.

"I chose this poem because, using all the things discussed previously, the poet has been able to convey a message I have often sought to convey, only without sounding so cynical. Death is nothing to dread any more than one dreads the sunset and the coming of the new day. Instead, it is the natural end to the journey we have all begun, and all one day must finish."

She moves unceremoniously back to her seat, and the class applauds without enthusiasm. William nods to himself. "Very good," he says, the greatest praise he'll ever give to any student while the rest of the class is present. "Sarah, you're up."

Sarah gets slowly to her feet. "You could have talked slower!" she whispers to Zoe before trudging to the front of the room. She clears her throat. "Uh..." she says. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,' by Robert Frost."

*************

TBC


	4. Chapter Three

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 4/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Finally, stuff's happening! If you're still with me, I think you're great! You deserve a Spike clone. But not the original. He's mine.

*************

After class, Zoe and her friends hang around the room while William collects his papers so they can get a ride. Zoe is the only one who lives in town; Roger had moved to Bristol when he was nine, and Sarah lives "off in the boonies," as she likes to put it, in Shoreham. Therefore, they often stay at Zoe's house after school until their parents can pick them up after work.

William slides the rest of his stuff into his black messenger bag, and throwing his jean jacket over his shoulder, heads for the door. "Come on, kiddies," he says, jovially. "We depart."

The others push past him as he turns to lock the door, and then they walk down the hall and out the side entrance to the parking lot. They clamor into William's old Cabrio, Zoe up front with her dad and Roger and Sarah in the back.

"Straight home, or stops?" William asks.

"Uh, I don't know about you," Roger says, "but I could really use a Coke."

Sarah nods. "Me, too."

"I hear an iced tea calling my name," Zoe, who is strictly anti-soda, admits.

"All right then. Beverage break." William pulls out of the parking lot, eerily emptied in just the few minutes they stayed behind so he could pack up. The sky has turned dark, rolling with deep, thick clouds, and as they leave the campus, it begins to rain, the little drops spattering messily on the windshield. William drives a couple of blocks to the Champlain Farms and parks in front of one of the gas pumps even though he isn't planning on getting any gas. The three teenagers pile out of the car and disappear into the dryness of the convenience store. William follows, not bothering to lock the car behind him.

Roger and Sarah both grab Cokes, but Sarah pauses with her hand still half in the freezer, looks down at herself critically, and selects a Diet Coke instead. Roger watches this disapprovingly, but doesn't say anything. Zoe scours the various brands of iced tea, grumbling, "Why must everything be sweetened or flavored?" before finally choosing the most basic kind she can find. All three return to the front of the store, beverages in hand, to find William standing at the counter, trying to order a slurpee.

"We're all out of strawberry," the clerk is saying. Zoe recognizes him from school: his name is Arnold, and he likes to yell, "Run, Zoe, run!" at her when she speeds down the hall in fear of being late for class. She hates him.

"Well, how about raspberry?" William asks patiently. Zoe can see that his patience is waning, however. His fingers are gripping the counter so hard that his knuckled have turned white. They must have been at this for a while.

"We're out of that, too," Arnold says, sounding bored.

"So you're out of lemon, blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry." William grits his teeth. "What flavors do you have?"

Arnold shrugs, picking an issue of "Guns and Ammo" back up off the counter and leafing through it.

William sighs. "Look," he says, "just give me whatever you have, okay?" He hands Arnold some money, and the clerk turns reluctantly to the slurpee machine and begins to do his job.

"Wanker," William mutters as soon as Arnold's back is turned. Sarah giggles, sounding not unlike Kelly and Emily.

Arnold comes back with the slurpee and slaps it down on the counter. Over Roger's protests, William pays for the rest of the drinks, and as he waits for Arnold to bring him his change, takes a sip of his slurpee.

"This is strawberry," William says pointedly when Arnold returns with a fist full of grubby quarters.

Arnold shrugs again, the master of indifference. "I guess we weren't out after all."

"Right." William has his lip firmly between his teeth. "Well, have a nice day," he says as he walks out the door. Once outside, he adds, "You great bloody pillock."

Sarah giggles some more, and Zoe fixes her with a harsh stare. They all climb into the car again. William is still seething, but doing a good job of controlling it. "Charming lad," he says as he pulls his seatbelt across his chest. He starts the car and pulls out onto the street. "He goes to our school, doesn't he?" Zoe nods. "Pity he's not in my class so I could flunk him."

Roger laughs nervously. "Which is not something you'd ever do to anyone present, right?"

William turns around and smiles at Roger a little too broadly. "Just as long as no one present ever does anything to hurt my daughter."

They ride the rest of the way in companionable silence. Zoe's house is actually right across the river from the school, but due to the location of the town's only automobile bridge, William has to wind through the town to get there. He drives past the Middlebury Inn, whose big brick facade is always decked out in ostentatious holiday decorations, currently mother's day themed; around the curve of the town green with its old white gazebo; past the Congregational Church, its tall spire scraping the clouds; and down Main Street. They drive by dada, the housewares store where Zoe works on weekends, and cross the Battel Bridge to their side of town. The Barnets live on South Street, just off Main and a mere three blocks away from the library and movie theater. The street is lined with trees and big, old houses, all of which are painted white, save for the Barnet's three story behemoth, which is bright yellow with blue trim. Their unconventional paint job got them a lot of hate mail when they first moved in.

William pulls his car into the driveway behind Anne's and puts it into park. Everyone spends a good minute heaving backpacks onto shoulders, and then they all stumble up the steps to the front porch, laughing because the inevitable has happened, and they are getting soaked. The big wood door is unlocked, but it is always unlocked. This is Vermont, after all - no one locks their doors. William pushes the door open with his shoulder and walks into a room of blood.

Blood on the floor, blood on the furniture, messages scrawled in blood on the walls. William falters for a moment, even though his first instinct tells him to get his daughter and her friends out of there. But his instant of shock and indecision is enough for the three teens to enter the room behind him. Zoe has the mail between her teeth, and it slips to the floor as her mouth falls open in an expression of mute horror. Sarah murmurs, "Oh my God," before bursting into hysterical tears. "I'll call the police," Roger sputters, reaching for his cell phone. His wrist is caught, mid-motion, in William's firm grasp.

"No," William says, his voice brittle. "No police."

Roger looks up at the man who holds his arm, a man who he has known almost his entire life, and who he has thought of as many things, but never as threatening. And for the first time, Roger is afraid.

William doesn't even look at him; his eyes are fixed on the writing on the wall. He realizes that the words to "Helter Skelter" are running through his head, but these are no song lyrics written here. COME HOME TO MUMMY. The letters still drip. I WANT MY SPIKE.

"Dad." Zoe's voice is barely audible, and her hand is fumbling about for his. "What does it mean, Dad?"

He swallows. "Nothing. It means nothing."

"Dad." He almost can't hear her anymore. "Where's mom?"

William shakes himself. "Zoe, Roger, Sarah, go next door to the Kieran's house and stay there until I come and get you. Don't talk to anyone."

"But they're in India," Zoe says. She sounds as if she has gone away.

"Use the key that they gave you so you could feed the dogs. Go! Now!"

They go, leaving him alone in a room he knows to be covered in his wife's blood.

The first thing he does is shut the door and lock it. Then he walks over to the piano and picks up the note he saw, just as he was meant to, when he first came in. He is relieved to see that it is not written in blood, but rather in pencil. In fact, the offending pencil is still resting by the note. It is one of Zoe's, with her name embossed on the side and her teeth marks covering the end, and William feels his small taste of relief drifting away. They could easily know about Zoe.

He forces his hands to stop shaking as he reads the note.

You have been running from us for a long time, but we grow weary of hide and seek. We've been watching for some time, just waiting for a cloudy day. She is ours now, as you are ours. Come home to us and maybe we'll let her live. Maybe we'll even let you keep her.

Come home. You can't hide what you are.

He crumples the note in his hand and tosses it to the floor. His eyes drift over the bloody mess that was his home, his gaze coming to rest on the big old mirror next to the piano. Anne found it at a junk shop when they first moved in, and she sponge painted the wooden border sage green to match the bookcases. William stares at his own reflection, at his mess of brown hair and lightly tanned skin and blue eyes hidden by wire rimmed glasses.

"Lies," he whispers. And then he walks slowly into the kitchen and fills a bucket with water, readying himself to scrub his wife's blood from the walls.

*************

TBC


	5. Chapter Four

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 5/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Um, you know who everyone is by now, right? Just checking...

*************

Zoe sits on the floor of the Keiran's living room, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. When they first came in, Roger had made a move to hold her, but she had pushed him away. Now he is comforting Sarah, who has nearly cried herself to sleep. She shudders occasionally, but then fades back into semi-consciousness. Zoe doesn't even want to look at her.

She is numb. My mother is dead, she thinks. My mother is dead, and my father... She doesn't want to follow that chain of thought to its end. And so she has allowed the numbness to take over her body, and her mind. She can feel the harness forming, but she doesn't even care.

The Keirans' black lab comes trotting over and nuzzles Zoe's shoulder, but she pushes the dog away. Sarah begins to cry again, softly, and Roger strokes her hair, murmuring unintelligible reassurances. Zoe stares at the wall and perfects the art of not thinking.

They wait.

After some indiscernible amount of time, William comes in the back door. His hair is wet and matted and his whole body is shaking. He has changed his shirt; the other one was soaked with blood and he didn't want his daughter to see. But the look in her eyes tells him that at this point it is far too late for that.

"She's not dead," he tells her. He doesn't want to stir up any false hope, but he won't lie to his daughter any more. "I'm going to fix things."

Zoe's gaze does not leave the wall. "Liar," she says.

He opens his mouth, but he realizes that there is nothing he can possibly say.

"She is dead." Her voice is like ice. "There's nothing you can do to fix things. She's dead! Someone wrote messages on the walls with her blood." She looks up at him, finally, but her eyes are harsh, accusatory. "What did it mean, Dad? I saw your face when we came in. What did it mean?"

He kneels down beside her and takes her hand in his. From the corner, Roger and Sarah stare up at him with big eyes.

"I don't have time to tell you right now. But she's still alive, I swear it. And when I - when we - get back, I promise I'll tell you all about it." He looks down at the floor. "I - we - should have told you a long time ago."

He gets up, on rubber legs, and walks back to the door. "Stay here until I get back. Don't let anyone in, understand?"

Roger is the only one who nods.

William looks at the three forms in front of him, at the three children huddling wet and scared on the floor of a strange house. "This isn't right," he says sadly. "I'm sorry." And then he rushes over and hugs his daughter tightly, pressing her rigid form to his. "I love you," he tells her. "Know that. You and her are the best things that ever happened to me. After tonight, we're not going to run anymore." And then he walks out the door and into the coming night, determined to set things right.

William is not yet fifty yards out the door before Zoe is on her feet. "Get up," she says, a new edge to her voice. "We're going after him."

Sarah looks at her, and she wipes the tears from her eyes and stands. Roger rises behind her, his jaw set into a determined line.

"Lead on," he says.

They get out of the house just in time to see William round the corner and head Southwest on Main, away from town.

"Why isn't he taking the car?" Sarah asks.

"I don't know. Just follow him."

William walks purposely, his head down and his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. Zoe and her friends follow about a hundred yards behind, trying to be stealthy. The rain has slowed to a steady drip, but all four are already soaked to the bone, so it doesn't really matter. Zoe barely feels the rain. She doubts that William does, either.

Main Street turns into South Main, and William keeps walking, heading up the hill toward the college. Zoe notices that his shoulders are so still; he walks like he has stones in his pockets. It is so unlike him that Zoe comes to think that if she screamed, "We're following you!" he wouldn't notice. Still, she is cautious, and when William cuts across the college rec center's parking lot, she makes Roger and Sarah hold back until he is back on the sidewalk and partially hidden by trees. They run across the slick asphalt and top the rise just as William crosses the street and heads into the cemetery.

"Of course," Roger mumbles under his breath. "It would be the cemetery, wouldn't it?"

Zoe gives him an odd look. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

She lets it drop.

The path through the cemetery is made of white stone, ground down at places to a thin chalky powder. It shines eerily in the light of the rising moon, like ice or snow, or large chunks of crystallized salt. It also crunches when they walk on it, so Zoe gestures for her friends to move off the path and onto the grass. They follow along, the wetness soaking through their sneakers and wrapping around their toes.

They crest a small hill, and the huge marble mausoleum at the back of the cemetery comes into view. Less than a year ago, on Halloween, the three of them walked here along a similar route and held a seance at the bottom of the mausoleum's steps. Nothing much happened: Sarah pretended to be possessed for a while, and Zoe knocked over one of the candles and started a very small fire in the grass that Roger stamped out with his foot. Then some drunken college students showed up, and with the cemetery becoming a less hospitable environment than they would have liked, they left, disappointed that not even a night at the cemetery could scare them anymore.

Tonight, they look on the mausoleum in an entirely different light.

"A mausoleum," Roger mutters. "Perfect."

But William does not approach the mausoleum; instead, he veers left, toward the bushes that form the western border of the cemetery. Zoe motions for her companions to hang back, and they watch from a distance as William ducks through the bushes and disappears from sight.

"And this whole cemetery/mausoleum thing held *what* purpose?" Sarah asks.

"A shortcut," Zoe says, realization slowly dawning. "Oh my god, I know where he's going." She races off after her father.

Sarah glances at Roger, confused. "Don't look at me, I'm just following her," Roger says, and he starts off after her with Sarah tight on his heels.

By the time they reach the hedges, Zoe has already passed through. Roger and Sarah push themselves through the tight weave of branches, emerging on the other side to smack right into Zoe.

"Ow," chorus Sarah and Roger.

Zoe ignores them, her eyes fixed on the old house at the top of the hill. "Look," she says, pointing, "there's a light on."

Their eyes follow her outstretched finger. Sure enough, a light flickers through the house's uppermost window.

"But no one's lived there in years," Sarah says. 

As if on cue, a shadow passes across the lighted window.

"Oh." Sarah swallows, considering. "But I thought there was that whole problem with the asbestos, and that's why the college couldn't use it as a dorm."

"I doubt these people are from the college," Zoe says, still staring straight ahead. "I also doubt that they care about the asbestos."

"Don't worry," Roger says brightly, "it's probably just Norman Bates."

Sarah glares at him. She opens her mouth to say something, but Zoe holds up her hand.

"Shh. There's somebody on the porch."

A figure has emerged, moving quietly on the rotting wood. He pauses with his hand on the doorknob, his form barely visible in the light of the rising moon.

Sarah is the first to recognize him. "It's just your dad."

"I know."

William turns suddenly, his eyes darting behind him, scanning the shadows. Zoe sucks in her breath, but William's gaze shifts back to the door with him none the wiser. He pushes lightly on the door and it opens without a sound. He steps inside, shutting the door softly behind him.

Zoe stares up at the space where her father was a moment before. "Come on," she tells her friends, and they run up the drive to the house as true night falls about them.

*************

TBC


	6. Chapter Five

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 6/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks for all the lovely feedback! I'm glowing.

*************

Anne can feel the ropes cutting into her wrists. She can feel the gag growing moist between her spread jaws. She can also feel every one of the fine spiderweb of cuts that trace her body, the tiny bites and nicks that they bled and then stopped before they took to much. They didn't even bother to drink from her. A sign, she knows, of disrespect.

She opens her eyes and sees nothing but white. So they've blindfolded her as well. She can't even get a look at her surroundings, see if there's anything she can use to facilitate an escape. She shifts her head around, hoping that the blindfold was placed sloppily and will be easy to dislodge. It remains firmly plastered to her skull. She barely restrains herself from letting out a growl of frustration, but she knows it is best to avoid attracting her captors attention as long as possible. Best to remain quiet.

But quiet is bad. Quiet means thinking, and she has nothing to think about but her fear for William and Zoe, and nothing to feel but guilt. This is all her fault. She was careless and stupid. And now, after all this time, the past has finally caught up with them. And it was she who let it in the door.

She doesn't hear anyone approach, but suddenly there are cool hands on her cheeks and the blindfold is gently pulled away. William stares down at her, tears of relief in his deep blue eyes. He undoes the gag, whispering for her to remain quiet. "I'm here, luv," he says. "Everything is going to be all right."

He bends down and kisses her softly on the lips. She leans into him, and then with a sharp jerk, knees him swiftly in the stomach.

Drusilla falls backward onto the floor, clutching her wounded belly.

"Fool me once, shame on me," Anne spits. "Fool me twice, shame on you."

"It's the other way around, actually," Darla says, stepping out of the shadows. She grabs Anne's shoulder and slams her body back against the chair. "Shame on you for hurting Dru. She was just having a little fun, weren't you Dru?"

Drusilla has pulled herself to her feet. She stands far away from Anne, wary. "You stole my Spike away," she says, her voice bitter and sad. "Kept him locked in a box."

"That's right," Darla says. Her fingernails are digging into Anne's shoulder, leaving little red marks in the shape of half moons. "But everything must come out of its box eventually. Or it suffocates." She shoves the gag back into Anne's mouth and reties it, much tighter than before. "Dru, get some rope. We're going to have to tie her feet as well."

"Yes, Dru, get some rope. It seems we have a pair of stupid bints who need to be tied to the roof and left for the sun."

William is standing in the doorway, pure, unadulterated hate filling his eyes. Darla takes one look at him, and she throws her head back and laughs.

"Why, if it isn't William! My, I seem to have deja vu all over again." She emits another peel of spiteful laughter. "Look, Dru. Your white knight has returned."

Dru looks at William, horror in her eyes. "That's not my Spike!" she cries. She backs away. "You're not my Spike!"

He glares at her. "You're right," he says. "I bloody well am not your Spike any longer." He rushes over to Anne, but Darla reaches out and snags his arm, jerking him away before he can reach his wife.

"Not so fast."

William doesn't even look at her, he just swings his free arm and punches her in the face. She barely staggers. Instead, she grabs the offending fist and crunches it within her own. William lets out a yelp of pain and struggles against her, but she holds both his hands now.

"You're not holding up your end of the bargain," Darla says, her face an inch away from William's. "We let her go when you let yourself go." She gives him a push and he sprawls on the floor. "We want Dru's Spike, not this pathetic specimen you've let yourself become."

William coughs, and a spurt of blood dribbles out of his mouth. "If you touch one hair on her head..."

Darla laughs again and walks over to Anne and slaps her across the face. Her head snaps back against the chair and she slips into unconsciousness. "We'll do all the touching we want," Darla says. "So you'd better hurry back." She turns away from William, no longer interested. "Dru, get the rope." She turns back and sees that William is still sitting on the floor. She smiles at him condescendingly and waves. "Don't you get it? Bye bye."

Her laughter follows him as he picks himself up and stumbles out the door, humiliation and sadness already drifting away to be replaced by anger. Anger, and he hopes, a plan.

*************

TBC


	7. Chapter Six

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 7/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oooh, swearing! I'll earn every inch of that PG-13 yet!

*************

Zoe presses her face up against the dirty window and tries to make sense of the dark shapes she sees inside. Old furniture? Nothing living, that's for sure.

"Do you see anything?" Sarah whispers.

Zoe takes a step back. "No. I think all the action's happening upstairs. We're going to have to go inside."

"Do you know where your dad went?"

"I'm right here."

All three teenagers jump. William is standing in the doorway, looking bruised and bloodied and tired. And angry.

"Dad, we -" Zoe starts to say.

"You followed me." Zoe nods, waiting for him to yell. Instead, he lets out a long sigh. "I'm not particularly surprised. Come on. We need to get out of here."

He steps off the porch and they follow behind him, Roger and Sarah hanging back, and Zoe running to catch up with her father.

"Dad," she says quietly, "is mom -"

"I'm working on it." His tone implies that that's all the information she's going to get.

She tries a different approach. "You're bleeding," she says.

He raises his right hand and rubs it across his face. It comes away red. "Oh?" he says. "I hadn't noticed."

The long drive, hidden in hedges, has ended, and they are back on the road in front of the cemetery. William turns and heads off in the direction of home, his walk very similar to the way it was on the way there, only now his head hangs even lower, and only his right hand gets shoved deep into his pocket. The left hangs uselessly at his side, more blood dripping from between the knuckles. He doesn't see to notice, or care.

Zoe walks silently at his side. She has experienced so many conflicting emotions in the past couple of hours that she no longer knows what to think. Right now she is furious, and nearly all her rage is directed at her father. What right does he have to keep her in the dark? It's her life as much as his. And she is starting to think that more and more of her peaceful existence has been a lie.

"How come you and I never go to the doctor's?" she asks suddenly.

William stops in his tracks. Then he realizes that they have come to a halt right outside of the funeral parlor, and starts walking again, more quickly this time. "What do you mean?"

"Mom goes. Sarah and Roger go. Everyone else I know goes. How come you and I never go?"

"Good genes," William says decisively.

"Bullshit."

Zoe knows she's hit on something when he doesn't criticize her for swearing.

"I don't have time to talk about this now, okay luv?" is all he says, and he starts walking faster. She lets him get ahead, falling back to walk with Sarah and Roger.

"Have you guys noticed anything unusual about me?" she asks.

Her friends look taken aback. "Um, you mean apart from this night, right?" Roger says.

She just looks at him. "No," he says, a little too quickly. "I mean, you're not, like, normal, or anything, but that's why we like you. That's why I like you."

"Yeah," Sarah says. "You're not full of it like Kelly and Emily. You're not afraid to speak your mind. It's good-not-normal." She ventures a look over to her friend. Zoe's lips are pressed together into a thin line. "Why do you ask?"

Zoe takes a deep breath. "Nothing," she says. "It's nothing."

No one speaks again until they are back at the Barnet's house. William walks in the front door, looking distracted, but the three teenagers hold back.

"Do you think..." Sarah swallows. "Do you think *it's* still there?"

No one has to ask what *it* is.

"No," Zoe says after a moment. "I'm sure he cleaned it up."

Warily, they walk inside. The entry hall's walls sparkle; they are whiter, perhaps, than they have ever been before. For a moment, it's hard to believe that what they saw the last time they came in this door was real, and they all almost expect Anne to come running out of the kitchen, apologizing profusely because she's burned dinner, and offer them all some lemonade. But she doesn't. And it is all too real.

William starts up the stairs to the second floor, but stops at the landing. "Sarah? Roger? Call your folks and get them to pick you up. Then wait for them outside," he says, in a half-hearted attempt at being parental. "And don't tell them anything," he adds. "Go home and try to forget this whole thing ever happened." He turns and trudges up a few more steps, disappearing around the corner.

"Yeah, right," Sarah says as soon as he is gone, "like we could forget this."

"I'll call my mom and tell her I'm at your house," Roger says, indicating Sarah.

"And I'll call my mom and tell her I'm at your house," Sarah says, nodding at Roger.

"Are you sure, guys?" Zoe asks. She sounds like she has something stuck in her throat. "Because whatever this is, it's really, really bad. You should probably get out while you still can."

"Zoe, you sound like a bad movie," Roger says, grinning now. "I mean, come on, this is the most interesting thing that's happened to us in years."

There is a moment of dead silence, the calm before the storm. And then Zoe explodes.

"My mother is missing! She's probably *dead.* She and my father have almost certainly been lying to me for years. We came home this afternoon and the walls were covered in blood. He may have washed it away, but that does *not* mean it's disappeared. So...so fuck you and your This is interesting.' Just go home! I don't want you here!"

She storms out of the room. Sarah takes one look at Roger and runs after Zoe. "Wait..." she starts to say, but Zoe spins around, effectively cutting her off.

"You too!" she screams. "Just stop whining and get out of here! You can flirt with my father later, okay?" Zoe storms away, and this time Sarah doesn't follow her.

************

William stands in the upstairs bathroom, in front of the mirror, his hands firmly grasping the sides of the grey marble sink. He found the sink in the barn when they first moved in, and he'd installed it himself, but in the interim he'd left it on the dining room floor and cracked it when fell off a ladder and landed on it. He'd patched the crack, but it was still very visible. He stares at it now, to avoid looking into the glass.

Beside the tub rests a large brown trunk. It looks rather like a treasure chest.

William turns on the faucet and takes a sip of water. He checks his watch. Time's up. He pulls the plastic shower cap off his head, crumpling it up and tossing it away. He turns on the hot water and sticks his head under the spray, washing the excess bleach away. When he looks up at the mirror, his hair is bright, shocking white. He slicks it back with a handful of gel and steps back, not so much admiring as assessing his work, making sure he has done things properly. A feeling of dread has settled in the pit of his stomach. To say he isn't looking forward to what he is about to do would be an understatement. He'd rather impale himself on a bed of nails, drink hot oil, roll around on burning coals...but those are not options. This is; his one and only option.

He walks over to the trunk and opens it. He digs through the clothes, finds what he is looking for, and changes into them. Then he removes the trunk's false bottom and pulls out a heavy, black metal box. He enters the combination and flips the box open. The inside is lined with thick, grey foam rubber, dividing the interior into two sections. The two sections contain identical black cubes, about two and a half inches long across each side. Each cube has a single black button in the center, and each is carefully labeled. William picks up the cube on the left, feeling its weight in his hand. Then he shuts the box and returns it to its secret place in the bottom of the trunk.

He walks back to where he was and stares at himself in the mirror. He runs his fingers along the sides of the cube. The plastic is cold to his touch. His whole body feels dipped in ice.

Slowly, he takes off his glasses and sets them on the side of the sink. He won't need them anymore.

His fist closes around the black cube. And then William takes a deep breath and pushes the button.

*************

Sarah and Roger are sitting in the living room, staring at their hands, when they hear the scream.

It starts out low and deep, but it soon grows, becoming a high pitched wail. Their heads snap up when they hear it. Zoe rushes into the room.

"What is it?" Sarah asks her.

"It's my dad," Zoe says instinctively.

She darts out of the room and up the stairs, with Sarah and Roger close on her heels. The scream has turned frighteningly animalistic. They reach the second floor, and Zoe turns right, toward the bathroom. As they round the corner, Roger slips on his socks and falls to the floor. Sarah stops to help him up, and so Zoe is the first to reach the bathroom. She flings the door open, thankful that no one ever got around to buying locks. And then she sees what's on the floor.

From the neck down, it looks human. It wears black jeans, a tight black shirt, black Doc Martens, and a long black coat that looks strangely familiar. But the face...the face is not a human face. The thing on the floor looks up at her with golden eyes, it's fanged mouth open and screaming, it's ridged forehead creased in pain. And somehow, that face is strangely familiar as well.

Zoe is standing frozen in the doorway when her friends catch up with her. Sarah takes one look at the thing on the floor and screams. Roger stumbles backward, slipping on his socks, trying to pull Zoe with him. Zoe pushes him away. She takes two steps forward, crossing the threshold into the bathroom, kneels down next to the now silent but trembling thing, and says softly, "Dad?"

His body convulses once more as another wave of pain hits, but her voice acts like an anchor that holds him to this world. With considerable effort, Spike shakes off his game face and pushes himself into a sitting position.

"Hi," he says weakly. He looks up at where Sarah and Roger stand, shaking and clutching at one another. His voice turns stern and parental. "I thought I told you two to go home."

Both Sarah and Roger look like they wish they had done as they were told. Roger swallows. "We thought," he starts to say, but has to stop and swallow again before continuing, "that we could stay and help."

Spike laughs then, in a very un-William-like manner. "Right, great. Scoobies, version 2.0." He stands and starts patting at his pockets, searching for something. Not surprisingly, he comes up empty handed. "Bugger. I could really use a fag." Off of Roger and Sarah's startled expressions, he adds, "Those are ciggies, kids."

He stretches his arms out, like a big cat waking up after a long nap. Then he stoops and offers Zoe a hand up. She takes it, but refuses to look at him. "You all right?" he asks.

There is a long pause, which Roger recognizes as the Zoe-calm-before-the-storm pause, and he instinctively takes a step back. But Zoe does not yell. She merely grits her teeth and looks Spike directly in the eye. "You," she says levelly. "Are going. To tell us. Exactly. What is going on. Right. Now."

Spike opens his mouth to make some excuse, but something about Zoe's expression stops him. "Now," she says again, and he can't help but smile. He is so proud of her. And she deserves to know the truth.

"Right," he says, taking a deep breath and sitting himself down on the edge of the trunk. "Well, for starters, your mum and I didn't meet at a teacher's conference at the Sheraton..."

*************

TBC


	8. Chapter Seven

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 8/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: In case you can't tell, we're in flashback now. This takes place about three years post-The Gift. Obviously, Buffy came back. Maybe even the way Joss brings her back. Maybe not. eg

*************

Spike paced back and forth across his crypt. He would pace until he reached a wall, and then he would turn around and pace in the opposite direction. He was surprised that he had not paced himself a rut in the floor by now. He hated waiting, and he hated the sodding sun for making him wait. But most of all, he hated how nervous he was.

I should not be nervous, he reasoned with himself. I've done this many times before - well, once anyway. And it's not like it's that big of a deal...

But it was a big deal, especially for Spike. After two years, he was still trying to prove - to Buffy, to the Scoobies, to the world, and most of all, to himself - that they could make it. That they could dance *this* dance, a dance that involved far fewer roundhouse kicks and cracked ribs and bloody noses, and far more touching and kissing, and, he thought, grinning, eventual shagging. And those bits he could handle - quite well, actually. It was the other bits he got hung up on: the boyfriend bits. Like picking out the perfect anniversary gift. He'd never had to do that before. With Dru he could just capture a nunnery for her to play with; but picking out a nice present for Buffy...that was hard.

Last year, he had spent hours at the mall - over several different days, because there was limited time between when the sun set and the shops closed - before picking out a rather expensive sweater that he thought she would like. She did like it; she even put it on over her dress and wore it home after their dinner. And so of course, they had to get attacked by slime spewing demons, and that was the end of the sweater. Spike was still bitter; he'd paid for that sweater with money he had *earned* (beating Xander at pool, but that was beside the point) and Buffy didn't even get to enjoy it.

He still worried that the "sweater incident" was meant as a metaphor for their relationship, a little cosmic hint from The Powers That Be.

He pushed that thought out of his mind as he took a moment's respite from pacing to make sure that the present he got her was still on top of the TV where he had left it, and that it hadn't mysteriously disappeared into the ether.

The present was still there, just as it had been the previous five times he had checked. He turned the package over in his hands. Inside, nestled in a cluster of pink tissue paper lay a small, brass, antique charm bracelet. Most of the charms were original - the ship, the Chinese bridge, the ballerina - but he'd added one of his own, as well. It was a tiny heart, pierced through the center with something that could quite easily be mistaken for a stake.

He thought it was a good gift. A little sappy, maybe, but still good. At least he'd stayed away from the "You slay me" card.

Looking up, Spike saw that the sun was beginning vanish behind the horizon. He shoved the present into the pocket of his coat and prepared to go out. This did not involve much because he had been ready for the past three hours.

"You are pathetic, mate," he said aloud. But he smiled as he said it.

Again, his eyes darted to the window. The sky was turning red as the sun dipped into the ocean. Almost time. He wished the bloody sun would just go about its business instead of feeling the need to put on this little show every night. It was like the stupid thing wanted to reassure the world that it was indeed coming back.

"Sod it," he said finally. and opened the door and went outside, just daring the sun to try to dust him. It wasn't true night yet, not for another half an hour at least, but it was dark enough. The sun meekly finished what it was doing and went away.

Spike walked slowly through the streets of Sunnydale, alternately worrying about the dinner reservations and planning the horrible things he would do to any sort of demon that so much as looked at them funny while they were on their date.

All violent thoughts ceased, however, the second that the Summers' house came into view. This part always made Spike especially nervous. He hated picking Buffy up at her house: it made him feel too boyfriend-y, like he ought to be wearing a tie. Spike drew the line at ties.

Hesitantly, Spike mounted the front steps and knocked on the door. He heard running footsteps and Dawn pulled open the door just as Spike mentally berated himself for not bringing flowers.

"Hey," Dawn said casually. "She's not ready yet. You can wait in here."

"Thanks, Nibblet," Spike said as he made his way into the living room and sat down on the couch. "Your hair looks really good. It's a nice look for you."

Dawn fingered her newly shorn locks self-consciously. "Thanks. I was just tired of the same old thing, you know?"

"Yeah. Every forty years or so, I get compelled to change my hair as well."

"You? Change your hair?" Dawn took a seat across from him. "That would be a shock."

He grinned. "Then I ought to do it soon, just to prove I can still shake you up."

"Oh? You're worried you're loosing your touch?" Dawn teased.

"Nah, I still terrify half the population of Sunnydale. Just switched halves. Not a big deal."

"Right, not a big deal at all," Dawn agreed. But both knew exactly how big a deal it was.

They settled into a companionable silence, with Spike asking Dawn the occasional question about school, or her current boyfriend, or what it was like working for Anya. After a few minutes, they heard Buffy on the stairs and Spike got to his feet. Then she came into the room, and he wished he was still sitting down. She was wearing a deep red dress, the color of blood, he couldn't help but think. And she was smiling at him.

"Wow," he said. "You look...it's a great dress," he finished lamely.

"And you look just the same as always," she said, walking over and giving him a chaste kiss on the lips. And then she whispered in his ear, not quite so chastely, "And that's great."

"I can be more than great," he whispered back, pushing deeper into their embrace. She laughed lightly, and then broke off suddenly, kissing him again, more fervently this time.

"Guys," Dawn said, ahem-ing slightly. "It's great that you've still got passion and all, but can you save it for later? My poor innocent eyes!" She covered her face in mock horror, silently pleased that she could still use the not-in-front-of-the-virgin thing to get them out of the house, even though she had done far more with Dillon Warner just last week. But she stuck with what worked: Buffy and Spike were quickly, if reluctantly, putting polite distance between themselves.

"Right," Buffy said, smoothing her dress. "We'll be back...at some point. If you go out, just please, please bring a stake or something? I've always found that they make excellent fashion accessories."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Buffy, please. I've been living on the Hellmouth for years. I know how to handle myself. Besides," Dawn added, becoming suddenly fascinated with her shoes, "I'm probably going to stay in tonight and veg."

Buffy nodded and made her way out the door. Spike paused on his way out, turning to Dawn. "He better be good to you, or I'll kill him," he whispered, "chip or no sodding chip." And then the door shut, and she was alone.

Within seconds, Dawn was at the back door, pulling it open and calling into the night. "Dillon," she said. "It's safe! They're gone!"

*************

They walked down the drive and got into the Summers' SUV, with Buffy taking her place behind the wheel. She had finally cracked and got her license about a year ago, and now she insisted on driving everywhere. Spike didn't mind. He liked watching her flick her hair out of her eyes when she got frustrated and flip off the other drivers. Buffy was vicious when she drove.

Tonight, she seemed lost in thought as she buckled her seatbelt, but then she turned and smiled at him broadly. Spike got into the seat next to her and realized that his lack of patience had got the better of him: he wanted to give her his present right then. He fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out the gift.

"Look, luv," he said, "I was going to wait and give this to you while we were waiting for the wine or something, but I just...I want you to have it now." He leaned across the transmission and handed her the package.

She favored him with a little grin as she took the gift, turning it over in her hands. "What is it?" she asked, shaking it and looking very much like a child on Christmas Eve.

"Just open it," he said, hating himself for being so nervous over a present.

"Okay." She tore into the wrapping, shreds of pink tissue raining down over the seat. And then she saw the bracelet, and her breath caught in her throat.

"Do you like it?" he asked, anxiously.

"It's wonderful," she said softly. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. "Did you know I used to have one of these? When I was little. My mom gave it to me. I lost it, a long time ago."

Abruptly, she leaned over to kiss him, but was halted by the seatbelt, which she quickly shrugged off. "Damn automotive safety," she muttered, and then she did kiss him. Her hand, still holding the bracelet, moved up under his shirt. He clutched at her, his hand running through her hair. God, he never wanted this to end. But...

"Luv," he said, pulling away slightly, "I'm glad you like it, but if we keep this up, we're never going to get out of the driveway."

She gave him one last kiss, but then pulled back as well. Her hands tapped against her thighs, thoughtfully. "I want to take you somewhere," she said after a moment. She slipped the bracelet around her wrist and started the car.

"Where?" he asked, jolting backwards as she pulled out of the driveway. Quickly, he buckled his seatbelt. It was fun to watch her drive, but not necessarily safe.

"It's a surprise," she said.

"A surprise? But we have dinner reservations."

"You gave me my anniversary present, now I want to give you yours," she told him coyly.

He arched an eyebrow. "I'm liking the sound of this..."

She smiled at him again, and he was content with that until he saw that she was getting onto the freeway.

"Okay, this is too much. Just give me a hint. Where are we going?"

It took her a moment to answer. "La Jolla."

He stared at her, baffled. "La Jolla? What's in La Jolla?" She didn't say anything, she just smiled that little half-smile that was starting to make him very nervous. "You know that brings up more questions than it answers?"

"I know."

Spike stared out at the road for a minute, at the little red and white lights of humanity rushing by.

"A new pair of shoes or some t-shirts would have been fine," he said finally. "Or a new telly. Mine's gone all scraggly again."

"This is better."

"You know I don't deal well with suspense," he said. And then he had an idea, and he felt instantly better. "Oh, I get it," he said. "You're just doing this to torture me. You can't beat me up anymore without feeling guilty, so you figured -- OW!"

"I can so beat you up sans guilt," Buffy said as Spike rubbed his sore arm. "Keeping you in the dark is just extra special fun."

"Oh."

They rode on in silence for a while, with Buffy occasionally directing rude comments at her fellow drivers.

"I'm hungry," Spike whined after they had been driving for about an hour.

Buffy threw her head back and sighed. "You're such a baby!" she moaned. "You probably have to use the potty, too."

Spike chuckled. "Thankfully, no. I just haven't eaten all day. I was going to order a big, raw, bloody steak for dinner."

"Oooh..."

"What?"

"Now I'm hungry, too. Okay, we'll pull over."

And that was how Spike and Buffy ended up having their second anniversary dinner at a McDonald's just off the freeway, en route to La Jolla.

*************

TBC


	9. Chapter Eight

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 9/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: All the prison metaphor stuff is for Mr. David Fury. Mr. Fury, may I just say - oops, I have something in my eye. removes problem with inappropriate finger Okay what was I saying? Oh yeah, that was it.

*************

"Okay, we're in La Jolla now. Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Spike asked as Buffy pulled off the exit ramp and passed by the big "Welcome to La Jolla" sign.

Buffy sighed, suddenly serious. In front of her, the road forked, and she took the fork that led away from the town proper and toward the industrial district. "Riley contacted me about a month ago."

A look of pure horror crossed Spike's face before coming back and sticking there. "He *what?* Oh, god, we're not coming down here to meet him, are we? Because believe me, that is *not* what I wanted for our anniversary."

Buffy looked at him like he was insane. "No," she said, and Spike let out a gush of unneeded air. "But he would have liked that, I'm sure. He called to let me know that the Initiative had re-established itself down here, and that this is where I should bring you if I ever wanted to dispose of you in a less personal manner." She looked up at Spike, who was looking whiter than usual. "I didn't tell him we were together."

"Right," Spike said, still trying to collect himself. "No need to add to the list of people who want to kill me. So, um, why are we here exactly? Did you think I'd get kicks out of sticking my tongue out at those Initiative ponces and saying Nyah nyah, look at me, it's Hostile 17, I haven't staked myself yet in shame?'"

"No, but you probably would."

"Bloody right. But seriously." He shifted around in the seat to face her. "Why are we here?"

Again, Buffy took a deep breath. Spike was beginning to think this was a bad sign. "About a week after Riley called me, I contacted an Initiative doctor to see what I could find out about your chip."

Spike's face fell. "You still don't trust me."

Buffy slammed on the brakes. Behind her, several horns honked. Sighing, she pulled off to the side of the road and put the car in park. "No. No, no." She turned to him and took his hand in hers. "I do trust you. I want to prove it to you." There was a pause during which Spike was sure he could hear the air vibrating around them. And then it ended as quickly as it had begun. "I called her because I wanted to see if she'd be willing to take it out."

Spike felt his mouth move, but no sound came out. "What?" he eventually managed to squeak.

"We're down here so that she can take the chip out."

Silence descended upon them again. Spike wished that his heart still pumped blood so that it could thud in his chest just to prove how worked up he was.

"I don't think that's a good idea, luv," he said finally. "I mean, I appreciate the sentiment and all, more than you could ever know, but..." He looked down at his hands. He remembered the things he had done with them. "It's great that you trust me this much, Buffy," he said, softly. "It's amazing; it's incredible; it's more than I could have ever asked for. And it's more than I deserve." He looked up at her again, met her eyes. "Because the fact remains, *I* don't trust me. If I got the chip out...I know I would never hurt you, or Dawn, or any of the Scoobies; but other people, strangers...I'm just not so sure. And I know that's not good enough for you. It shouldn't be good enough for you."

She thought about that for a moment before answering, but when she did, there was real hope in her voice. "That you would say that...that you have doubts...that seems to me to be the greatest evidence that you don't need the chip anymore. If you were really going to revert to your old ways, don't you think you'd be a bit more enthusiastic at the prospect of getting it out?" He started to protest, but she silenced him with a wave of her hand. "But that's not all this is, Spike," she said. "I love you. You make me happier than I've ever been. And mostly, you make me feel safe. But there's always this nagging question: what happens when the chip stops working? And so I need to know Spike. We both just need to know."

Spike shook his head. "We really don't. We could just go home and forget all about this. You can get me a new TV as a present instead," he added, hopefully. And then, more desperately, "We don't need to change anything."

She lay her warm hand on his cold cheek. "But don't you see? I don't think it will change anything. It'll just remove the doubt. I need that, Spike. I need that if I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you."

The significance of what she'd said sank in, and Spike gave silent thanks that he wasn't a *complete* poof, because if he were, he'd most certainly be in tears. As it was, he was fairly close.

"I love you so much," he said, cursing bucket seats as he leaned in to kiss her. "I'll do it. Of course I'll do it."

"Good," Buffy said when they broke away. She was sniffling a bit. She pulled the car back out onto the road and tried to make herself look more light hearted than she felt. She couldn't let him know that she was scared. "Just think," she said, "next time Xander pisses you off, you'll be able to smack him."

"Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" he said, plastering a cocky grin on his face. But he felt sick inside. "Buffy," he said as she turned off the main road and started down a long driveway, "if...if I can't control myself, I want you to -"

She cut him off. "Don't even say it. It's not going to happen. See?" She gestured to her determined expression. "Willow lent me her resolve face."

*************

The driveway ended abruptly in a vast parking lot. Buffy slid the SUV easily into one of the places; the lot was nearly deserted, which made sense, considering that it was almost midnight. Spike opened the door of the car and jumped down onto the asphalt, feeling like he was going to upchuck the last two days worth of Big Macs and blooming onions and blood onto his shoes. He should not be reacting this way. He should be overjoyed; he should be doing backflips across the empty parking lot. Finally, he was going to be free. He was being let out of prison. So why did it feel like the walls were closing in on him?

"You okay?" Buffy asked, gently laying her hand on his arm. If she was at all nervous, she was hiding it very well. "You look deader than usual."

"S nothing," he said, hoping to shake his anxiety away with a flick of his shoulders. "Just trying not to dwell on the fact that somebody's going to be cutting into my head before this night is over."

"We really need to do this," she said, her mouth tight.

"I know."

They followed the natural path out of the parking lot, toward the large concrete complex looming in the foreground. It was divided into two halves, separated in the middle by a courtyard that held a long, low reflecting pool. The whole complex sat at the edge of a steep cliff, beyond which the ocean stretched indefinitely into the night. The buildings themselves were luxurious in a cold, industrial sort of way, except for one jarring detail: they had no windows.

"The Initiative had this built special, then?" Spike asked.

Buffy shook her head. "No. It used to be a CDC building. You know, a bio lab thingy. My class actually took a field trip down here once."

"Sunnydale High took you to a Center for Disease Control? With that school's luck, I'm surprised the whole class didn't get Ebola."

She laughed. "Yeah, we probably would have. But this was back in elementary school. Pre Sunnyhell and my night job."

Spike smiled at the thought of a pre-Slayer Buffy, wondering what she was like then. He voiced the question.

"Oh, I was a complete Valley Girl," she said, coloring slightly. "Like Cordelia times ten. You wouldn't have liked me."

No, I probably would have killed you, he thought bitterly. Out loud he said, "I'm sure I would have found something to like."

The walked for a few minutes, until they were standing in the courtyard at the edge of the reflecting pool, which was doing a very poor job reflecting Spike.

"Do you know where we're supposed to go?"

"She said she'd meet us here."

"Who's she?'"

"The doctor I spoke to. Her name's Miranda Peters."

"Are you sure she's not," Spike twirled his finger by his ear in the international symbol for mentally imbalanced, "batty?"

Buffy shrugged. "She sounded okay on the phone."

"Great, and you're letting this lady cut into my skull because she sounded okay on the phone'?"

Buffy looked at him like he was insane. "Of course not. I had Willow check her out."

"Red knows about this?" he asked, genuinely surprised. He figured that this was the kind of thing that would stay at the Slayer-Watcher level, at least until after the fact.

"Not exactly..." And something in her voice made his anxiety blossom all over again.

"You didn't run this by anybody, did you? Not even Giles."

She shook her head. "No."

He sighed. "Buffy, can I say again that I think this is a very bad idea? At the very least, you're going to end up with a royally ticked off Watcher on your hands, and at worst..." He still couldn't bring himself to say it. He had to be the only convict who, with the prison gates in sight, was still trying to scramble back to the safety of his cell.

"It's going to be fine," she said, as much to reassure herself as to comfort him. "This is for us, anyway, not for them." She reached up and pulled him into a kiss.

"I see this reaches beyond the scientific applications we discussed on the phone," a cool voice from behind them said.

*************

TBC


	10. Chapter Nine

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 10/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

*************

Spike and Buffy broke apart guiltily and turned to face the woman standing before them. She was tall and slim, and dressed in an immaculate white lab coat, her tight, brown curls scooped into a loose ponytail and tied with a scrunchie. Her face was cool and professional, but not unfriendly. Right then, it even seemed as if she were trying to force back the edge of a smile.

The woman stepped forward and presented her hand to each of them in turn. "I'm Dr. Miranda Peters," she said. "And you must be Buffy Summers and Hostile 17."

"Spike," Spike said, a bit harshly.

Dr. Peters took it in stride. "Nice to meet you, Spike," she said, without a touch of malice in her voice. "Ms. Summers has explained your unique situation to me. Although," Dr. Peters raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow, "she seems to have skimmed over some of the more interesting details."

Buffy and Spike exchanged a look, but neither said anything. Then they realized that Dr. Peters wasn't saying anything else, either; she just watched them, like specimens under a microscope. It did not help diminish Spike's level of anxiety.

"So, uh, why exactly did you agree to help us?" he asked finally. "Don't think either of us would be on the list of the Initiative's best chums."

"No," Dr. Peters agreed, "you most certainly are not. But I have, shall we say, my own agenda." With that, she turned on her heel and began walking toward the building to the right of the pool. "Follow me, please."

Spike turned to Buffy as they walked a safe distance behind Dr. Peters. "This is not doing anything to quell my fears, pet," he whispered.

"Let's just follow this through," she whispered back. "At the very least, we can get some more information, and then bolt if necessary."

He nodded, and then suddenly found himself laughing.

"What?"

"This is shaping up to be a bloody peculiar anniversary."

"Face it, Spike, we can never be normal."

For some reason, this saddened him more than he thought possible, even though he had told her exactly the same thing many times. His laughter died. "I know."

Ahead of them, Dr. Peters came to a halt in front of a shiny metal door, and after punching a code into the small keypad at its side, held the door open for Buffy and Spike. They entered, warily; but the room before them was nothing more than a sparse office, lined with bookcases holding row after row of leather volumes. Dr. Peters gestured for them to sit, before taking her own seat behind the desk. She folded her hands on top of the blotter, and looked up at the couple, expectantly.

Spike found he was fiddling with the gold bolts on the side of his chair. "Look, is all this really necessary?" he asked after a moment. "Can't we get on with it already? Or are you just really desperate to show off your office?"

Dr. Peters lips separated into a thin smile. "Just trying to make sure no fears go un-quelled," she said in such a way that made Spike doubt that there was any way her choice of words could be a coincidence. They were going to have to be more careful. It was foolhardy to believe that this would be anything close to easy.

He shook his fears away and tried to concentrate as she continued. "Now I know your past dealings with the Initiative have been...less than pleasant. But when you get right down to it, you're either going to have to decide to trust me, or not. If you choose not, then you're free to leave at any time."

"Fine. Just one question. Why?"

"Why?" Dr. Peters asked, looking down her nose at him. "I told you, I have my reasons."

"Well, that's pretty sodding unspecific. Considering that it's my brain you're going to be poking around in in a minute, I think we both deserve to be reassured that you're not going to do anything funny once you're in there."

Buffy's hand tightened around Spike's wrist as he spoke, but it was not a touch that asked him to back down, it was one of support. "Yes, Dr. Peters," she said, standing, "I believe we do deserve some sort of reassurance. I know you are fully qualified to perform the procedure - yes, I looked into you," Buffy added, off Dr. Peters' reaction. "Did you think I wouldn't? And so I also know you have a clean bill of mental health. But even people with the best intentions," her voice lowered for a moment, and Spike realized, grimly, that she was thinking about Riley, "still might not deal with this situation properly. Now we have come all the way down here, but we are perfectly content to go all the way back with nothing changed if you do not persuade us otherwise." Buffy took a deep breath, but her gaze never wavered from Dr. Peters' face. "So. Talk."

A multitude of emotions seemed to wash over Dr. Peters cool features then, but when they had passed, it was clear she had come to a decision. "Very well," she said, finally. "I didn't want to delve into this, but I was naive to think it wouldn't be necessary." She sighed and got to her feet. "Let's begin with a visual aide, shall we?" she said, a bit of a twinkle returning to her deep brown eyes. "I've always been a visual learner myself. Spike, would you come around to this side of the desk please?"

Spike broke contact with Buffy reluctantly, but he rose and went to stand by Dr. Peters. She was taller than he was, he noted, cursing the 19th century for producing such short people, and the 20th for messing about with the perfectly good height median. And then he cursed the 21st century, just for good measure.

He added a little something extra to this last curse when he heard what Dr. Peters said next. "Spike, would you hit me, please?"

Spike looked at her like she was insane, which he was beginning to suspect she was, despite what Willow may have found out about a clean bill of health. "Now why the hell would I want to do something like that? To give myself a nice, pre-surgery migraine?"

Dr. Peters grit her teeth. "Just do it please," she said. "Although not in the in the face, if you don't mind."

Spike continued to waver. He looked over to Buffy, who seemed as puzzled as he was, but nodded nonetheless. "All right, ducks, it's your poison," he said, and let his fist connect with Dr. Peters' shoulder in what really amounted to no more than a sharp tap. And he waited for the pain to come.

It didn't.

Instead, Dr. Peters said "Ow," and rubbed at her shoulder with her other hand.

"It's stopped working already?" Buffy asked, confused.

Spike shook his head, comprehension dawning. "She's not human, pet," he said.

"Impossible. I'd have known the second she walked up to us. But the good ol' Slayer sense isn't going off at all."

"Chip doesn't lie."

"He's right," Dr. Peters said, still rubbing her arm, and wincing in a manner that, at this point, was beginning to border on the pathetic. "I'm a vampire."

Now it was Spike's turn to be confused - again, he thought, disgusted. "Now wait just a bloody minute," he said. "*That* is bloody impossible. Non-human entity you may be, but vampire you are not. I can hear the blood flowing in your veins. I can also hear you breathing. And see you reflected in the sodding picture frame, I might add." He pointed behind them, where Buffy and Dr. Peters' reflections bounced back off the glass of the latter's framed Hockney print. Spike's image, of course, was nowhere to be seen. "Those aren't exactly what I'd call vampiric traits."

"No," Dr. Peters said. "But that doesn't change the fact that I am a vampire. Or the fact that if you and I," she gestured to Spike, "were to go to the airport, we'd set off every metal detector in the place."

Spike's whole world shut down as the pieces clicked into place. He took a step back and found himself leaning against a bookcase for support.

"You have a chip?" Buffy asked. Spike almost wasn't listening anymore, his brain forming other plans.

Dr. Peters nodded. "It makes me appear human in every way. You could almost go as far as to say that biologically, I am human. But I'm not. And were I to have it removed, or shut it off, I'd be just like any other vampire."

"How did this happen?" Buffy asked quietly.

Dr. Peters sighed. "I'll give you the short version. My partner, Dr. Brakeley...he and I had been working for the Initiative for four years, developing this and other implants." Her tone and expression grew wistful. "This was our baby, though. Our theory was that it could work like a vaccine for those who were turned. If they were reached soon enough after the turning, and they had the chip implanted, they could retain their humanity without ever experiencing the bloodlust, without ever setting foot down the dark path." 

Spike returned from his reverie long enough to roll his eyes at this.

"But the Initiative wouldn't approve it," Dr. Peters continued. "They said it failed to address the problem of the soul. A vampire artificially turned human with the chip would still lack a soul. We were ordered to abandon work on the project, and go back to developing better versions of the chip you have." She glanced at Spike, but he was lost in thought and didn't even look up. "None of which, by the way, were successful. Which is not surprising, considering that less than a month later, the facility in Florida at which we were working suffered from a co-ordinated attack by a local group of vampires. I don't remember it very well now, but..." Bitterness crossed her features, but she pushed it away. "I was - I allowed myself - to be turned.

"I don't even want to think what would have happened it Dr. Brakeley hadn't been the one to find me. But he was. And the first thing he did was put our baby in my brain, and he kept it a secret so no one else would ever have to know. He saved me." There were tears at the edges of her eyes as she spoke, and Buffy dreaded what she knew would be the inevitable end to this tale. "Two months later he was gone."

"Vampires?" Buffy asked, because she had to know.

Dr. Peters shook her head. "Car accident." She laughed, bitterly. "The mundane deaths are still just as deadly."

"I know," Buffy said, quietly. She reached across the desk and gave Dr. Peters' hand a squeeze.

The doctor shifted away, suddenly uncomfortable. "Oh, look at me. Crying. How professional." She wiped at her eyes with a kleenex before disposing with that sole piece of evidence of unprofessionality in the rubbish bin under the desk.

"It's okay," Buffy said. "I think you've said more than enough to convince me that you have reason to be sympathetic to our circumstances."

"I have just one question," Spike said, abruptly surfacing. "And don't take this the wrong way, or anything, cause believe me, I'm not one to judge...but, uh, does this mean you don't have a soul?"

The quaver returned immediately to Dr. Peters' voice. "Yes," she said softly. "Yes, I guess it does."

"Do you miss it?"

Dr. Peters stared at the blond vampire for a moment. She saw the lack of malice in his eyes. She saw that his hands were shaking. She saw that the answer to this question was even more important to him than it was to her. And it was very important to her.

"I should, shouldn't I?" she said finally. "But...but you know what? If what I've been taught didn't tell me otherwise, I don't think I'd ever have known it was missing. It just doesn't seem that important to who I am. I'm still me. I haven't changed. Not in the ways that matter." She looked up at him again. "Does that answer your question?"

"Yeah." Spike's cocky grin returned to his face. Only it was genuine this time. "So now that's settled," he said, getting fully to his feet and running his hand through his hair. "Let's get this show on the road."

*************

TBC


	11. Chapter Ten

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 11/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks, everyone, for all the feedback! I am doing the dance of 50 reviews and scaring my cat. ;-)

*************

It was just cruel, making her wait outside. Buffy felt like she had been thrust into a baby delivery from the 1940s, only she had to play the roll of the father and wait outside, and...smoke her pipe, or something. Actually, stealing one of Spike's cigarettes didn't seem like such a bad idea. Only the cigarettes were in his coat. And the coat was in the operating room. Where Dr. Peters was probably cutting into his brain at this very moment...

Buffy shuddered. She didn't like to think about the actual operation part of it. It bore too close a resemblance to what happened to her mother. Just like then, this was only the beginning. After tonight, the waiting would begin. Waiting to see if something was going to go wrong.

He wouldn't, she told herself. He's come too far. He won't let it happen. He won't make me have to...

...Have to kill him.

No.

She shook the thought away, getting to her feet and walking back into Dr. Peters' office. Spike had been in the operating room with the doctor for over four hours. Now, sunlight was just beginning to drift in the window. Buffy checked her watch. It was after five a.m. This was bad: people would start coming in to work within the next couple of hours, and now it was too late to drive back to Sunnydale. Because of the sun, and Spike's tendency to catch on fire when out in it, they'd have to get a hotel room and wait out the day.

Actually, Buffy thought, that might not be such a bad thing after all.

Unless...

No. She was not going to allow herself to think along those lines.

For what had to be the eight time that morning, Buffy tried browsing over Dr. Peters' books for something marginally interesting to read. What still persisted on being there, however, was shelf after shelf of medical books. Half of the time, Buffy couldn't even understand the titles. God, didn't this woman even have a People magazine lying around or something? Then she could at least do the crossword puzzle.

Buffy sighed and stalked back out to the chair Dr. Peters had set up for her in the hallway outside the operating room. Over and over she had repeated this cycle: chair, bathroom, chair, drinking fountain, chair, office, chair...yup, pretty soon she'd be running off to the bathroom again for fun. It was better than just sitting here and staring at the wall and thinking about all the many, many things that could go wrong...

Actually, now sounded like a good time for another trip to the bathroom.

*************

Bright. Bright light invading his eyelids, forcing them to blink and his eyes to water. He tried to sit up and was overcome by a wave of dizziness. His skin tingled. And he was hungry. Terribly, terribly hungry.

After a moment, he managed to push himself into an upright position. In front of him, Dr. Peters bent over a sink, scrubbing her hands. Her image swam back and forth before his eyes.

He had to swallow a couple of times before he could speak. "Did you do it?" he asked.

Dr. Peters looked up, surprised that he was awake so soon. "Yes," she said, shutting off the faucet. "How do you feel?"

"I don't feel any different." He started to push himself off the table but stopped as another wave of dizziness hit. He reassessed. "Okay, actually, I feel like I haven't fed in about four months. But other than that, no different."

"You're not particularly observant, are you?" Dr. Peters smiled as she walked up to him. Gently, she took his arm, guiding his hand until it came to rest on his chest. "There," she said. "Do you see?"

And Spike whispered, "Oh god."

*************

Buffy walked slowly back from the bathroom, carefully positioning each foot in the direct center of every square tile into which she stepped. Yet another trick to keep herself from thinking too much.

She rounded the corner to find a man wearing Spike's clothes and a ridiculously large grin standing by her chair.

"Spike?" she called, even though it couldn't be Spike; Spike didn't grin like that, not even after (or during) sex. Smirk, yes; smile shyly, yes; flat out grin, no. But this guy was grinning from ear to ear. And he certainly looked like Spike.

She found herself running to him, her legs moving of their own volition.

They came together like opposing sides of a magnet: hard, fast, and not without sticking power. He kissed her passionately, like it was their first time, and held her as if he'd never really touched her before. And then he took her hand and pressed it up against his chest.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, softly.

She felt it. And she remembered the wave of hope that had passed over her when Dr. Peters had first told her tale; the hope that she had quickly pushed away, because it involved asking for something that she had no right to request. But he had given it to her anyway, of his own accord.

"This was supposed to be my gift to *you,*" she said as she felt the rhythm of his heart beating in his chest. "You already got me a bracelet, remember?"

"And you bought me that lovely meal at McDonald's," he said in the pauses between his continuing assault of kisses. "Just like you're about to buy me a really big breakfast. Preferably at some place where we can sit outside in the sun."

She broke away suddenly, laughing. "Oh god," she sputtered. "You. Sun. I just can't believe it." Her voice lowered. "It's almost too good to be true."

The huge, very un-Spike grin returned. "Believe it, baby. Look." He brought her hand to his neck. "Pulse." He held her hand in front of his mouth. "Breath. And did I mention how very hungry I am? And not for blood." He took a breath - *he* took a *breath* - and looked down at her. "That was a hint," he prodded.

Buffy realized she'd been staring at him like he might disappear or implode at any moment, and shook herself. "Right," she said. "Let's get you out of here. Did Dr. Peters..."

"She left. Said sentimental moments made her uncomfortable. Don't worry, I thanked her. Put on a great poofy show and hugged her and everything. Probably inspired her desire to escape."

He turned around as if he was looking for something, and Buffy noticed he was squinting. "Just a sec," he said, and took two steps in the direction of the chair before he was tripping over it. Buffy reached out and steadied him, worry rising in her stomach.

"What's wrong?"

Spike blushed, actual color flooding his pale cheeks. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Kinda forgot to mention it, but, uh, I can't really see all that well. It's a good thing you're driving."

Buffy couldn't help but smile. "Wait a sec," she said. "Does this mean the Big Bad needs glasses?"

"Shut it, Slayer," he said as he fumbled around by the side of the chair, finally coming back up with a small black case gripped between his fingers. "The Big Bad needs contacts, that's all. Come on, let's go." He took a step forward and somehow managed to trip over the chair again. "Okay," he admitted as he righted himself again, "I may need you to help me a bit."

She was more than happy to oblige.

*************

Buffy's original intention was to buy Spike a huge, decadent breakfast at La Jolla's most posh restaurant, but at six o'clock in the morning, the only thing open was the McDonald's. And so they ended up parked in the lot next to the restaurant, sitting on the hood of the SUV and eating Egg McMuffins.

"This is the best thing I've ever tasted," Spike said, leaning back against the windshield and practically moaning from the feeling of the sun beating down on him.

"What about blooming onions?"

"Mmm...I'll have to try those again. I mean, I've always liked human food well enough, but it still paled in comparison to blood. This, on the other hand," he held up the Egg McMuffin like it was a sacred relic, "this is bloody magnificent."

Buffy took another bite of her McMuffin, which she thought was actually rather gross, and smiled at him apologetically. "I promise to get you something really good when we get back home."

"We going straight back then?" he asked lazily. He could lie in the sun for hours. Days, even.

"Well, before I was thinking that we'd have to get a hotel room, due to someone's combustion factor, but that's not necessary anymore." She rolled over onto her side and watched him lick the last of the grease off his fingers. "But we still can, if you want to."

A devilish grin spread across his face. "You expect me to say no?"

"It was kind of rhetorical."

*************

Spike slid quietly out from between the sheets and crept across the carpet to the bathroom. It was odd, the realization that he had to pee. Okay, so this was one of the less pleasant aspects of being human (-ish, a part of his brain that he chose to ignore reminded him). There were worse things. He took care of his business quickly and was about to hurry back to bed when he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.

He'd been purposely avoiding looking. He'd refused Buffy's offer of her compact and had turned a blind eye to the many reflective surfaces that adorned the SUV. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but this avoidance was not motivated by modesty, but by fear. He was afraid to see what he had become.

But now, there he was, right there on the wall. And he couldn't help but look.

The hair was different, obviously. And the scar on his eyebrow was quite visible. And perhaps there was a hardness to his features that hadn't been there before. But, as far as he could tell - and his vision was blurred, he reasoned, which might account for something - it was still the same face that stared back at him that had been there 125 years ago. Same mouth. Same nose. Same eyes...

No, he thought. The eyes had lost a great deal of their innocence. But they were wiser, too.

Spike smiled then, and his reflection smiled back. Then he tip toed back to bed, wrapped Buffy in his arms, and held her tight, the afternoon light spilling in through the window and basking the sleeping couple in its glow.

*************

TBC


	12. Chapter Eleven

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 12/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm kind of pushing the PG-13 rating with all the swearing in this one. I hope I'm not offending anyone, but Zoe's upset, okay? She can wash her mouth out with soap later.

*************

"That is the most romantic thing I've ever heard," Sarah says. Over the course of the story, her jaw has taken up permanent residence somewhere around her waist. Roger looks rather like he's been hit in the face with a pan. Zoe won't look at anyone. 

"Like Romeo and Juliet,'" Sarah continues, "Only better."

"It's not like Romeo and Juliet' at all," Zoe spits.

"Yeah," Spike agrees. "I'd prefer not being compared to that prat."

"It's a lie, that's what it is," Zoe says. She looks up at her father, venomously. "One. Big. Fat. Lie."

He sighs. "You know it's not a lie, pet."

"Oh yeah? How am I supposed to know anything when if what you just told us is true, then my whole *life* up to this point has been a lie? Is that somehow preferable?"

Spike shakes his head, sadly. "No. No, it's not. But it doesn't change what's true."

Zoe opens her mouth, and then closes it again. There's nothing she can say. She folds her arms across her chest and turns her back to her father.

"Wait," Roger says suddenly, as if he's just figuring things out. "So you're a *vampire*?"

Spike nods. "That I am, mate."

"And Anne's real name is *Buffy*?"

Another nod.

"Whoa. That is so weird."

Sarah comes out of her romantic stupor long enough to say, "Congratulations, Roger, you just picked up the delayed reaction and understatement of the year awards in one graceful sweep."

Roger ignores her. "And you like, drink blood?"

Spike looks down at his nails. He needs to find some black polish. "I haven't for a long time, but yeah, I guess I do."

"So how old are you?"

He has to think about it for a minute, remind himself that he isn't 42 like it says on his drivers license. "One hundred and seventy-three," he says, "next November."

"Wow, Zoe." Roger prods her shoulder affectionately. "I guess I don't have the oldest father after all." 

Zoe pushes herself further into the corner, away from his touch. "Shut up, Roger," she mutters.

Roger does not shut up. He turns back to Spike, who is still leaning against the trunk, an unreadable expression on his face. "So how'd you become a vampire?" he asks eagerly.

Zoe spins back around. "This isn't interview with the *fucking* vampire, Roger!" she screams. And then more levelly, "If he's going to tell us anything, it'll be the rest of the story he just told." She glares up at Spike. "You're leaving stuff out."

Spike looks down at his shoes uncomfortably. The laces on one of his Doc Martens are undone. This strikes him as odd; that never used to happen before. He ties them up tight again.

"There's not really much more to tell," he says.

"Tell us anyway."

"Um..." Spike gets to his feet and starts tidying up the bathroom as he talks. "Well, about a year and a half after I got re-wired, your mum turned 25, and she was retired as the Slayer. She was the first Slayer to ever make it to retirement. Her powers went away, and her responsibility ended. But she still stuck around and helped out - we both did. We got married with plans to stay in Sunnydale. But then you were born, and it wasn't safe anymore. We left and came here." He kneels down beside her and takes her hand in his. "We just wanted you to be safe, Zoe."

She jerks her hand away. "Fucking great job you did. And how is mom doing right now? How safe is she?"

Spike takes a step back like he's been stung. His daughter knows just which buttons to push. Great. She takes after him.

"She's alive," he says. He starts to take a breath before realizing what he's doing. This is why he needs the cigarettes. "She's being held for ransom by Drusilla and Darla." Zoe and her friends stare up at him, confused, so he clarifies. "My sire and her grandsire-cum-childe." They still look confused, but he's too tired for this right now. "Don't ask," he says.

"What's the ransom?" Roger asks, sobered.

"Me."

"Oh." Roger considers this. "So why wouldn't they take you before? I mean, they were in that house, right?"

"Yes, they were. But they didn't want who I was then. They don't want William. They want me. Spike."

"And you're just going to let them have you?" Sarah asks, her voice quaking.

"Not if I can help it." He walks back over to the trunk and opens it again. Zoe stands as the lid falls back, watching over her father's shoulder. So this was the secret of the trunk. She liked it better when she didn't know.

Again, Spike removes the false bottom, but this time he leaves the black box well alone. It's bad enough that he can feel the little black controller residing in his pocket rub against his leg every time he moves; he wants as little reminder of their situation as possible. He pulls out a large black gym bag and lays it down on the tile floor, yanking open the tired old zipper.

"Whoa," Roger remarks when he sees the bag's contents. "That's a lot of weapons."

"And it may not even be enough," Spike says. He pulls out a handful of stakes, shoving one securely into his belt, and dropping another into his pocket. He hands two more to Zoe, and one each to Sarah and Roger. "You're not to get close enough to use those unless absolutely necessary," he tells them.

Next out of the bag are two fairly worn, but still deadly looking crossbows. "You all took archery in gym, right?" 

Zoe ignores the question, but both Roger and Sarah nod. "Had to," elaborates Roger. "You know Coach Wagner."

Spike rolls his eyes towards the heavens. "Do I ever." He hands a crossbow and a small quiver of arrows to Roger and the same to Sarah. "Right," he says. "Then you both know to point this end away from you."

Roger nods again, but Sarah looks down at the crossbow in her hands a little unsteadily.

"Mr. Barnet?" she says quietly. "They had us use longbows in gym. We've never had to use crossbows before."

"And hopefully it will stay that way," Spike says briskly, and resumes shuffling though the bag again. But then he pauses and looks up at the girl standing petrified before him. "Sarah," he says. "Since when have you started calling me Mr. Barnet? You don't even at school when you're supposed to." He puts his hand on her shoulder and is relieved when she doesn't shy away. "Spike is fine. Or William, if it makes you more comfortable. I'm used to both, now."

Sarah nods, but silently she decides that it will be easier not to call him anything. She is not quite sure how to react to the person standing before her. First of all, he may not actually be a person. Second, he is now holding a large, curved axe with a wicked edge and grinning at it. Third, he is her best friend's father, and her English teacher. And fourth, she is kind of in love with him. Even more so, now that he is wearing many things tight, black, and leather.

This is definitely not of the good. She hopes Zoe doesn't notice.

Luckily for Sarah, Zoe is not in a condition to notice much of anything. Since when did her life turn into this sick, twisted soap opera by way of Edgar Allen Poe and Wes Craven? How did she possibly end up in her bathroom, clutching two wooden stakes, while her father the vampire offers her something sharp and asks, "Would you like an axe, pet?" as if he were offering her a second helping of mashed potatoes?

"Yes, please," she hears herself say, and takes the axe. It feels good in her hands.

"All right, now we have weapons." Spike is already locking the trunk back up again. "Now we're just - bloody hell, Roger! Point that somewhere else!"

"Sorry," Roger says, lowering the offending crossbow. He has already loaded it, and was innocently sighting down the arrow when his trajectory got a little close to Spike's chest. Roger knows he should feel scared and apprehensive, but he can't seem to calm the flood of excitement that has washed over him. Finally, he is getting a chance at a real adventure. With real weaponry, too.

"Take out the arrow until I tell you otherwise," Spike says, proving that he can still be parental even if he is handing out armaments. Roger reluctantly complies. "At least you had the right idea, mate," Spike consoles him. "Aim for the heart, straight and true. You all know that, right?"

"We've all seen fucking Dracula,' all right? Aren't we wasting time here?" Zoe hoists the axe up onto her shoulder. It does feel good.

"First of all," Spike says. "Any Dracula movie you might have seen was probably 90% bollocks. I've met the guy and he's a right ponce. Second, it's always best to be prepared. Which is why we're going to make a couple more stops before we settle this matter once and for all. I don't care if it takes more time now; when we settle this, I want to make sure it's settled forever. Got it?" All three of them nod, although Zoe seems a bit more reluctant about it. "Good. Just remember, I'm only bringing you along because I know you would find some way to come anyway. Don't make me regret it later, because the other option is I lock you in the basement."

He grins at them. Sarah and Roger both take a step back. Zoe twirls the axe in her hands and puts a "go ahead and try" expression on her face. Despite his utter transformation from the mild mannered school teacher he was just this afternoon, this is still her father. He's still the same guy who fell backward off a ladder and cracked the sink; still the same guy who is intimidated by Coach Wagner; still the same guy who snores like a weed wacker/chainsaw/outboard motor. He's still her father. And she won't let him scare her.

...golden eyes...

"Let's go," Zoe says briskly, and pushes her way out of the bathroom. She walks downstairs, not really caring if the rest of them are following. She can hear their footsteps behind her though, and she only has to wait in the entry hall, in the room with the too-white walls, for a couple of seconds before they are all piling in behind her.

Spike ushers them outside onto the porch, and with one last look at his house - the look which, he knows, might very well be his last - he pulls the door shut behind him. And locks it, tightly.

*************

TBC


	13. Chapter Twelve

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 13/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

*************

"So where are we going, exactly?" Roger asks as he and Sarah climb into the back of the Cabrio. As usual, Zoe sits up front with her dad. Roger finds it interesting that their world has been turned upside-down, yet they still follow the same seating arrangements.

"When you were being all twenty questions before, you reminded me how long it's been since I've fed," Spike says as he fastens his seatbelt. "I've got to be in top form if I'm going to be in a fight. We're going get me something to eat, and some smokes."

Roger nods, thinking that he could use something to eat as well, until he realizes that that's not quite what...Spike - he's still having trouble thinking of Zoe's father like that - meant. The whole drinking blood thing suddenly seems much more real and much less cool than it did upstairs in the safety of the bathroom. How exactly, Roger wonders, is Spike planning on getting himself something to eat?

His worst fears appear to be confirmed when Spike pulls up in front of the Champlain Farms. "Gonna get myself a slurpee," the vampire announces as he hops out of the car. He disappears into the store.

The three teenagers sit for a moment in stunned silence. Roger looks back and forth between his friends, trying to divine what they are thinking. Zoe is staring blankly into the night, but Sarah is gnawing on her fingernails. Oh hell, somebody's got to say it, Roger thinks. "Um," he says. "You don't think..." Zoe turns around in her seat to look at him, her expression unreadable. "You don't think he'd, you know..."

"Just say it, Roger."

"You don't think he meant a slurpee in a less literal sense, do you?"

Sarah's back tenses. "Oh my god, he's taking revenge on Arnold for being so nasty earlier!"

"Serves him right if he is," Zoe mumbles.

"No!" Sarah says, undoing her seatbelt. "We've got to stop him!" She starts to get out of the car. "Come on, Roger."

"She's right, Zoe. We can't let him do this."

Roger gets out of the car, too, and Zoe reluctantly follows. They are halfway across the narrow stretch of parking lot when Spike comes back out of the store, carrying a brown paper bag in the crook of his arm and sucking red liquid out of a tall Styrofoam cup with a straw.

"Hey kids," he calls. "Why didn't you wait in the car?" He hands the paper bag to Roger. "Look," he says. "I got you some crisps."

Spike gets back into the driver's seat, and the others get back in behind him, warily. He takes another big sip from the Styrofoam cup before turning around in his seat and offering it to Sarah and Roger.

"Want some?" he asks.

"No!" they answer in unison.

"Your loss," Spike says, taking another big sip. "It's strawberry." He finishes off the rest of his slurpee and chucks the empty cup out the window. It lands, noisily, in the garbage can next to the gas pump.

Spike takes a new pack of Marlboros out of his coat pocket, removes a cigarette, and lights it with an old metal lighter he used to take on camping trips to set fire to kindling.

"Mom's not going to like you smoking," Zoe says quietly.

"Your mum'll understand that under the circumstances, it's necessary," he says as he pulls out of the lot.

"How, exactly?"

"Part of the persona." Spike lets his eyes drift up to the rearview mirror - in which he can no longer see himself reflected, which, as he'd nearly forgotten, gives driving an extra odd little twist - and sees Sarah and Roger quaking in the back. "You two all right?" he asks. "You sure you don't want to go home?"

"Yes," Roger says. "It's just..."

"We thought you were going to eat Arnold!" Sarah blurts out.

Spike stares dumbstruck for a minute, and then he bursts out laughing. "You mean that pillock back at the gas station? Why the hell would I do that?"

"Well, you're a vampire," Roger says pointedly.

"But I wouldn't..." Spike starts to say, but the words die in his throat. "Eat your crisps," he says.

He finds that he is gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the silent veins in his hands are bulging. For the first time in over twenty years, he is fully a vampire. He is not held back by any chip of any kind. He could easily have bitten that stupid, nasty little kid. And yet, the though didn't even cross his mind.

Dru's going to take one look at him and she's going to know.

It doesn't matter how much bleach he puts in his hair, or how tight his clothes are, or the number of cigarettes he smokes. She's going to know. And there's nothing he can do about it.

No. He's going to do everything he possibly can. Starting with nicking a large amount of blood from the local hospital and bathing in it if that's what it takes to get the scent on him.

Thus determined, he pulls into one of Porter Hospital's many parking lots. The town may be small, but there are still plenty of cars parked in front of the hospital at this time of night, and the windows of the ER are ablaze with light.

"Wait here," he says as he gets out of the car.

"What are you doing?" Roger asks.

"I do have to eat, you know," Spike says, flicking the butt of his first cigarette away. Immediately, he goes to light another one. Old habits die hard.

"You don't mean..." Sarah's voice trails off.

"Blood bags!" Spike says, exasperated, flicking ash all over the place. "Jeeze, a little faith..."

"Dad," Zoe says, coldly. "I think, under the circumstances, it's more than understandable if none of us are feeling entirely comfortable with the whole trust thing. So just get your blood already, okay?"

Spike takes a long drag and walks away, muttering. The three teenagers watch his back until it pushes its way through a side entrance and disappears.

"I always thought I was born here," Zoe says once she's sure he's gone. "I mean, they never said, Oh, yes, Zoe, you were born at Porter,' but I just assumed, you know?" She stares straight ahead as she talks, not looking at her friends. "I mean, everyone in the area was born at Porter. You both were born at Porter, right?"

Roger and Sarah nod, and then realize that Zoe can't see them. "Yes," Roger says quietly.

"Right. So I just assumed." Out of nowhere, Zoe's fist slams into the dashboard. "I assumed an awful fucking lot!" she screams. And then she sinks back into the seat, quietly resigned once more. "Well, I am not assuming any more, ever again."

Neither Roger nor Sarah really knows what to say to that, or even if there is anything they can say. Roger does not want to admit that he is actually rather jealous of Zoe; he'd give anything to discover that his parents were more than they seemed, but they remained a dentist and a shopkeeper: mundane, just like him. Sarah wants to comfort her friend, tell her that everything is going to be all right. But even Sarah, an optimist, knows that that is probably not true.

"I'm sorry," is all she says. Zoe doesn't answer. She doesn't expect her to.

After a couple more uncomfortably silent minutes, Spike comes running back out of the side door, several plastic bags full of thick red liquid clutched in his arms. He thrusts them at Zoe.

"Sorry, luv, could you just hold these for a sec?" he says, hopping into the car next to her. He pulls out of the parking lot, hurriedly. "I wasn't quite as covert as I would have liked."

They speed away down the road. Looking back over her shoulder, Zoe sees a man in hospital scrubs burst out of the door and peer off into the night. After a moment, he stomps back inside, angrily slapping the side of the building with his palm.

"They didn't catch us," Roger says happily.

"I can't believe that little ponce saw me in the first place," Spike fumes.

"Worried that you're losing your touch?" Zoe asks, acidly.

"No," Spike says. This is true. He isn't worried that he's losing his touch; he's worried that he's lost it, permanently. He glances over at his daughter, clutching the fruits of his efforts in her hands. He slows the car down to a more reasonable 55 mph and holds out his hand. "May I have one, please?" She hands him a bag, not looking at it. He tears it open with his teeth. "You comfortable holding the rest?" he asks.

Zoe stares down at the bags of blood apathetically. She can hear Sarah making mildly disgusted noises from the back seat, but nothing about the red liquid in her hands bothers her. It's just blood. She's pulled far grosser things out of the drain when cleaning the shower.

"Sure," she says.

"Thanks." He takes a big swig from the bag in his hand. The blood slips down his throat like rich, liquid copper. He is surprised to find it doesn't taste as good as he remembered. And it's human blood, too, not pig or cow. Well, it is cold. Maybe that has something to do with it. "Wish I had some place to warm this up," he mumbles.

"You warm it up?" Roger asks. "Why?"

"Tastes better that way." He doesn't want to explain why, and luckily, Roger doesn't ask. Spike finishes off the rest with a gulp, and crumples the bag in his fist. He almost tosses the crumpled plastic out the window, but thinks better of it, and shoves it down into the map slot in the car door.

"May I have another?" Zoe passes him another bag. He drinks this one just as quickly, not really enjoying it. There are three more left. He should probably drink them all, get as much of the smell on him as possible, but he really doesn't want to. He's still kind of hungry, though. "Roger?" he asks. "You still got any of those crisps left?"

Roger hasn't touched the chips, and neither has Sarah. He hands Spike an unopened bag of Lays, wordlessly.

"Thanks, mate," Spike says. He devours a huge handful of sour cream and onion chips and licks his lips, thoughtfully. Now these taste good; salty and crispy and delicious. Much better than...

"Fuck," he says under his breath. Zoe looks up at him, but doesn't say anything.

Dru's going to know. Dru's going to take one look at him and she's going to know.

He drives on, feeling sicker and sicker all the while.

Pretty soon, they are pulling up in front of the college rec center. Spike parks the car and gets out, slinging his axe up onto his shoulder. "We walk the rest of the way," he says.

No one questions him. Seatbelts are unfastened, doors opened, weapons gathered. Sarah can't help but think back to this afternoon, when they'd all climbed out of the car in Zoe's driveway in much the same manner, only now they're heaving weapons around instead of backpacks. She weighs the crossbow in her hands. She hopes she's up to this. She doesn't want to let Zoe down. Or William. Spike. Whatever.

Roger puts his hand on her shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. "It's gonna be okay, Sarah," he says. "We're gonna kick ass." He smiles, but he doesn't look particularly convinced.

They start walking, Spike in the lead, with Zoe following close behind, but over to the side, not next to him. Roger and Sarah walk a few steps behind her, huddled close together. There are four people, and three units. It worries Roger that father and daughter have separated themselves. They should all be one unit, or father and daughter should walk together, or Zoe should walk with him and Sarah. But Zoe won't even look at him anymore; won't look at anyone. And this is not the kind of thing that anyone should go into alone.

He grabs Sarah lightly by the wrist and pulls her up next to Zoe. "Hey," he says.

"Hey," she says, quietly.

"You all right?" he asks. Stupid question, he thinks.

"Peachy," she says.

They don't say anything else after that.

About a hundred yards away from the house, Spike stops walking and turns to face them. "Look," he says. "If at all possible, I want you to avoid having contact with Darla and Dru. We're all going to go in the house, but you're not to leave the first floor. I'm going to go in and get your mum and send her down. I want you three to get her out of there. I'll follow...as soon as I can."

From the expression on his face, Zoe knows that could be never.

But sometimes, there just aren't any more choices.

She nods, and follows him into the house.

*************

TBC


	14. Chapter Thirteen

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 14/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

*************

Anne had never been very good at waiting. Sitting around when there was something useful to be done seemed like such a waste of time. No, she was always action girl. If someone was in trouble, she'd find a way to deal with it, quickly and efficiently. She'd rescue whoever needed rescuing.

She doesn't like how the tables have turned. She doesn't like being the one who needs to be rescued.

They've removed the blindfold, but not the gag. The dirty strip of cloth has grown damp from resting between her jaws. Perhaps it will soon be wet enough to bite through. She tries to moisten it with her tongue, but her mouth is so dry now that it is a useless endeavor. How long has it been since she has had something to drink? If this keeps up, she'll die of thirst before they have a chance to kill her.

Good. She doesn't want to give them the satisfaction.

Part of her hopes that no one is coming for her; that William did the smart thing, took Zoe, and got as far away from here as possible. But part of her, the selfish part, is praying that William will come for her. And she knows William enough to be pretty confident that it's the selfish part that is going to win.

She hears him before she sees him, a slight creak on the stairs. And then he sweeps into the room with cat-like grace, like smoke swirling in the breeze. And her breath catches in her scratched throat at what she sees.

It's like a vision from the past. The years have melted away from his face, vanished along with all the color in his complexion. It pulls at her, pushes her brain in directions it does not want to go. It confirms her fear that everything was no more than a facade, a fancy scientific glamour. A monster in a man's clothing.

It's not his fault, she tries to remind herself. He had to deactivate the chip. But it still hurts her, to see him like this again, after so much time...being normal.

"Face it, Spike," she had said, "we can never be normal."

For once, Anne wishes she could have been wrong.

All semblance of normalcy is long gone, however. He strides into the room, the forgotten but familiar swagger back in his step. His duster floats around him and his beautiful blue eyes flash gold. And he is grinning, a wild, manic grin. A predatory grin.

He walks right by her as if she were not even there.

"Dru," he murmurs, seductively, and Anne is desperate to see what is going on. She can hear Drusilla squealing with delight, but she can't turn around. She is forced to listen to her husband fool around with his ex behind her back. Literally. It is far worse torture, she decides, than anything that Darla could have come up with.

But Darla doesn't seem to be particularly happy, either. She is standing in the corner, just barely in Anne's line of sight, her arms crossed over her chest. She is watching the reunion of Spike and Dru, her suspicion openly displayed across her face. She bites her lip, and then disappears out the door.

It is not any sort of residual Slayer sense, but just plain old maternal instincts that let Anne know that her daughter is in trouble. She realizes, with sudden horror, that Spike would be just stupid enough to bring reinforcements in the form of their daughter, and quite possibly, some of her friends. If Darla could smell them...

Her body is too weak to fight her bonds at all effectively, but Anne strains violently against her gag. She tries to shake it off, she gnaws at it, but to no avail. Finally, she resorts to screaming into the cloth. But the sound is horribly muffled. Worse still, it falls on deaf ears; from what she can hear, Spike and Dru are so engulfed in one another that the house could fall down upon them and they wouldn't notice.

Exhausted and beaten, Anne sinks back into her chair. And for only the third time since her mother died, she begins to cry.

*************

Zoe waits with her friends at the bottom of the stairs. Around them loom a miscellany of furniture from the past. Covered in sheets, the antique chairs and love seats and end tables appear like ghosts, frozen in space as well as in time. All and all, this house would be pretty cool - if it weren't for the circumstances that brought them here.

Zoe spins her axe around, getting used to the weight of it in her hands. Always one to prepare for the worst, she tries to imagine what it would be like to thrust the axe into another human being - or humanoid being, she amends. What would it feel like the moment the blade sinks in, and steel meets flesh? Zoe decides she is being too morbid, and tries to think of something else.

Unfortunately, "something else" is the thing that has been bothering her all evening, the line of thought she cannot push away. It teases her, like an itch at the back of her throat, impossible to scratch. There is still something wrong with her father's story; something that doesn't quite seem to fit. And try as she might, Zoe can't seem to put her finger on it.

"Maybe I can't see the forest for all the trees," she murmurs.

"What?" Roger looks up from the floorboards he is studying.

"Nothing," Zoe whispers. "Sorry."

She is trying to figure out which parts of the situation correspond to the forest and which parts are the trees, when she feels a tingle race up her spine like an icy finger. She jerks around, but sees nothing in the oppressive darkness, just the ghostly shapes of the furniture that wait silently around the room, like a sleeping army. Zoe shivers in spite of herself, and she remembers why she spent so many years afraid of the dark.

Then she hears Roger's voice, distant and childlike. "Zoe?" he asks. "Where's Sarah?"

*************

There was a time when holding her like this would have been the closest thing to heaven for Spike. Her long dark hair in his hands, her cool white skin against his, her soft red lips dancing over him. No chaos demon, no Angelus; just him and his Dru.

But as he holds her now, as she runs her sharp nails down his chest and looks up at him with her sad, insane eyes, he knows that time is long gone. And now, it is nothing but a game.

"I've missed you," she coos. But her expression is sad. "Are you finally free? I feel the chains pulling at you, Spike. You swing upside down by your ankles, but you smile. You are the hanged man, never again to stand on your own two feet, but laughing all the while." She pushes as stray strand of hair back into place, much as she did one fateful night over 140 years before. "You scare me, William," she says, and she steps away, her pale white hands falling to her sides.

Under other circumstances, it could be considered closure between them. But it is in that moment that William knows he has failed.

So for Darla to come in with Sarah held tightly under her iron nails is just redundant, really. But Darla has never been one for subtlety.

"Lookey here, Spike." She spits his name out like bitter wine. "I brought you a welcome home gift."

She pushes the girl to him, and Sarah lands sobbing against his arm. He tries to hold her steady, but she claws away from him, hysterical with fright, her thin blond hair coming loose from it's carefully constructed knot and falling across her face, where it becomes stuck down with tears. Instinctively, he grabs hold of her wrist when she tries to push away, and pulls her close into a deadly embrace. She shudders against him, blubbering.

William looks up at Darla's expectant face. He thinks about sacrifices, and what is best for the cause. And he knows what he must do.

Quickly, so that he doesn't have to think about it, he manhandles the screaming girl until they are standing in Anne's line of sight, directly in front of the door. He grins wickedly up at Darla. "I want her to watch," he says, indicating Anne.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Anne resume struggling against her bonds, even harder than before, but he does not allow himself to look at her. Instead, his gaze is fixed on Sarah's smooth expanse of white neck. He twists his hand into her hair, jerking her head back. His game face comes on without him even having to summon it. He runs his tongue across her skin, feeling her blood throbbing in her jugular and tasting her sweat. She whimpers, but no longer has the strength to struggle against him. And so he lowers his teeth to her neck, and he whispers, "Run."

His movements are fluid, he'll still give himself that much credit. In one graceful motion, he pushes Sarah toward the door and whips around, pulling out a stake. But Darla is just as quick. Within seconds she is upon him, a fury of teeth and claws. She is older, and meaner, and not out of practice, as he is. And unlike him, she doesn't have four other people to worry about.

It is his desire to make sure that Sarah has made it out safely that enables Darla to take him down. He turns his head to the door to check on the girl, and even though he is relieved to see her disappear down the stairs unharmed, it is enough of an opening for Darla to slip in and disarm him. The stake flies from his hand and skitters across the floor. William delivers a swift kick to Darla's midsection, and she staggers backward, but before he can free his second stake from his pocket, or reach the axe he left propped by the door, she is on top of him again. She pins his arms down with her elbows and holds him tight.

"You didn't fool me for a second," she tells him.

He brings his knee up, forcing her off. He gets to his feet, licking the blood from his lips. "Probably better for me in the long run," he says.

"You don't have a long run."

She backhands him, and he blocks it, but sloppily, and the force of the blow still sends him stumbling backward.

"Ooh, you're rusty," Darla clucks.

"That's what you think." Deftly, he spins around, his elbow connecting firmly with the side of her face, and she reels away. He leaps for the axe, but as his hand closes on the handle, he glances upward and catches sight of the figure standing in the doorway.

"Zoe?" he says, and at that moment, Darla charges him from behind. His head slams into the wall, his mind exploding into stars, and the last thing he sees before he slips away is his only child, alone in a room with Darla and Drusilla.

*************

TBC


	15. Chapter Fourteen

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 15/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

*************

"Well, this just keeps getting better and better," Darla says. She gives William's unconscious body a kick. Laughing, she turns around to face Anne. "If this is the cavalry, you're in big trouble, sister."

Anne shoots daggers at Darla, but a slow smile has begun to spread across her shrouded lips.

Darla is oblivious, however, her gaze now focused on Zoe. The girl stands in the doorway, funneling all her anger and fear into forcing her hands to stop shaking. She grips the handle of her axe, a determined expression on her face. Her friends flank her on either side, their eyes wide but angry. Sarah, especially, is seething.

"I'm going to kill you," Zoe says with certainty. "You've ruined my life."

Darla smiles sweetly. "And now I'm going to end it," she says.

She lunges at Zoe, but is stopped short by the chair that comes crashing down on her head.

Anne stands triumphantly, holding the remains of the shattered chair high above her head. The ropes that held her hang in tatters around her wrists and ankles, having been worked down to nothing by hours of patient twisting and pulling.

Anne has never been a patient person, but extreme circumstances bring out the hidden talents in everybody.

"Don't you dare touch my daughter!" Anne says, her voice steady even though her body trembles. She remembers how her own mother protected her once, and she is determined to do the same. She hoists one of the broken chair legs in her hand; voila, instant stake. "You're going to die for what you've done."

Darla snarls, and gets to her feet. She and Anne begin to circle one another.

"Oh, have we ruined your little television fantasy? What did you think this was, Leave it to Beaver?' Ozzie and Harriet?' Honey, that is so over. All families are disfunctional nowadays. Did you somehow miss the memo?"

Anne lunges, but Darla knocks her back, easily. Seeing that her mother is in no condition to fight, Zoe prepares to join the fray, but before she can move two steps, a figure blocks her path. Zoe stares up at that thin white face framed by long dark tresses, and into those deep, insane eyes, and finds that she cannot move.

"I know you," Drusilla says, studying the girl. "You are mine, too."

"Leave her alone!" Roger steps gallantly out in front of Zoe, blocking Drusilla's path. Dru swats him aside like a discarded rag doll and he falls unconscious to the floor. Dru takes another step forward and she holds Zoe's chin in her hand.

"You too are chained," she says. She runs a cold finger down the side of Zoe's face. "But you still have the key."

"Zoe?" Sarah says, uneasily. She shifts her crossbow in her hands, unsure what to do with it.

"Shut up," Zoe whispers.

Sarah wavers, not knowing whether to pry Zoe away from the woman with the lost eyes or see if she can help Roger. "Zoe..." she starts again.

"Shut up!" Zoe says, more forcefully, and Sarah makes up her mind, rushing to Roger's side.

"What key?" Zoe asks.

Dru caresses her cheek with her icy hand. "Plastic magic has locked you away in a little black box," Dru says. "But you will free yourself, and you will come back to me. We will be a family again." And then with one last touch, she drifts away, back into the shadows.

Zoe shakes herself, feeling like she is surfacing from a deep pool. The first thing she sees is Darla land a punch to her mother's face, sending her sprawling to the floor.

"You stupid girl," Darla says. "You forget that you are not the Slayer any longer." She straddles Anne's heaving form, bleeding again from too many cuts to count. Darla laps up a stream of blood running down Anne's cheek. "Ah, but you still have a Slayer's blood," she says happily, her game face coming on as she leans over to finish the job.

And then a crossbow bolt erupts in her shoulder, and she falls back, howling. She spins around to face her assailant, and is shocked to see that it is Sarah who holds the bow.

"Get away from her!" Sarah says, surprised that her voice doesn't shake.

"Sorry, sweetheart, I can't do that." Darla pulls the arrow from her shoulder and tosses it angrily to the ground. "But I'll be sure to save time to play with you later."

"Never," Anne says, getting back up off the floor. Her whole body protests, screaming from pain and blood loss, but she finds he feet, and prepares to engage Darla once more. 

The vampire turns around to face her, but as they once again begin to circle, Anne turns to Zoe one last time.

"Run," she says. And then, "Please."

And suddenly, Zoe understands. The forest stretches before her, its knarled mass of trees clear to her eyes. But not only that; Zoe sees the path that, twisted though it may be, leads the way out of the woods. And so wordlessly, Zoe lifts Roger's crumpled form into her arms, and with Sarah's help, takes him out of that place as her mother fights on behind them, holding out just long enough for them to get away, and not a second longer.

*************

Darla stands over the former Slayer's broken body, victorious. She has waited so long for this moment. Because of this woman, Drusilla lost her Spike. Because of this woman, Darla lost her Angelus. Because of this woman, Darla lost her life.

Even the anticipation of revenge is sweet.

Anne looks up through swollen eyes. Her body is spent. She can't even lift a finger in her own defense as Darla leans over, licking her lips. But she forces her tongue to work, and as Darla's fangs sink into her neck, she whispers, "You'll lose."

And then suddenly, the weight is lifted off her body. Her eyes flutter open again, and she sees Drusilla's hand on Darla's shoulder, holding her back. Darla looks up furiously at the dark haired vampire, but Drusilla's chin is set in defiance.

"You mustn't, grandmummy," she says. "You mustn't."

*************

"But you don't have a license!" Sarah sputters as Zoe pulls the spare set of keys from where they are hidden, taped to the bottom of the car. It's a good thing Anne never broke her habit of locking the keys in the car and got William to follow her safety precaution as well.

"Oh, you're worried about the Middlebury Police Department now?" Zoe says, forcing the key into the ignition and glaring at her friend. "I wouldn't. They're all at home, asleep in bed like normal people."

She starts the engine and maneuvers the car away from the curb. Sarah hastily tightens her seatbelt, and not a moment too soon, because Zoe takes a speedbump too fast, and the car shudders.

"Ooops," Zoe says. "Sorry."

In the backseat, Roger finds himself jolted back into consciousness. He opens his eyes, blearily, and then starts, realizing where he is, and with whom.

"Zoe's driving?" he says vaguely, and then promptly passes out again.

*************

They reach Zoe's house relatively unharmed. Zoe and Sarah awkwardly carry Roger into the house and lay him down on the couch. Sarah sits down beside him. She stares up at Zoe, her eyes wide.

"We shouldn't have left," she says.

"We all do what we have to do," Zoe says, softly.

Several minutes pass, in silence. Then Zoe seems to shake herself; her shoulders fall back, and she lifts her head again.

"You'll sit with him?" she asks. Sarah nods. "Good. I have something to take care of." She turns and walks away.

Sarah takes Roger's clammy hand in hers and squeezes it tightly. She glances down at her wristwatch with its little picture of the Eiffel Tower. It's just after two o'clock in the morning. Four more hours until dawn, and the end of the longest night of their lives. Sarah closes her eyes, and allows herself a moment's worth of peace.

*************

TBC 


	16. Chapter Fifteen

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 16/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Short chapter. Sorry. More coming! (Am I terse today, or what? g)

*************

It all comes back to the trunk, Zoe thinks ruefully. It still sits, rather innocently, in the bathroom, looking out of place next to the bathtub and toilet. She kicks it, and the wood chips a little bit, but it doesn't make her feel any better.

Roger was right, she thinks. It really is a treasure chest, and the prize it holds is the truth. And like every good bounty, this one comes with a curse.

Ignorance *is* bliss.

Zoe wonders, then, when they would have finally told her if all this hadn't happened. Would they have ever aired out the attic and shared their little secret? She honestly doesn't know. And it's not like it matters anymore, anyway. What's done is done.

Steeling herself, Zoe flips open the trunk and removes the false bottom just as she saw her father do. The little black box is cold and heavy in her hands.

"So this is what they've kept me locked up in," she says aloud.

The box has a six-digit combination lock on it. Zoe doesn't bother with it. Instead, she lifts the box high above her head and smashes it down against the side of the tub. It repels back, and chips of paint, both black and white, come flying into Zoe's face. She ignores them, and brings the box down again. After two more hits, a crack forms. In three, it widens. In five, it shatters.

Zoe reaches down among the debris and picks up the black plastic cube, still nestled in it's bed of grey foam rubber. She studies the single black button; it seems made for her thumb. She itches to press it. But she contains herself; she must be ready first.

She goes to the mirror and checks to make sure everything is in order, knowing that it will be her last chance to do so. In front of the mirror, she primps - a rare experience for her: she's a jeans and t-shirt girl. Now she wears a version of her Halloween costume from the previous October: Death, from her favorite comics and films. Zoe has outfitted herself in tight black pants and a black strappy tank, black boots, and a black belt studded with silver. A large silver ankh hangs around her neck in place of her usual cross, which she knows is no longer safe to wear. What a pity that she never thought to use it while she could. Apparently, she thinks, the lessons pounded into you from birth are the first ones you forget under stress.

Zoe decides she is satisfied with her appearance, but then, as an afterthought, she shuffles through the makeup cabinet beside the sink and pulls out a tube of her mother's eyeliner. In one deft movement, she draws a small black swirl under her right eye, completing the look. She looks good, and she tries to smile, but her stomach clenches. She doesn't want to admit it, not even to herself, but she's terrified. So many things could go wrong. She remembers a fairy tale she read when she was younger, one of the not-nice ones. In it, a princess wished that she could grow younger every day instead of older. The princess' wish was granted, and she aged backwards until she was a helpless baby in her crib. Then she disappeared into nothing.

Zoe thinks of this now, and she has to grip the edge of the sink to keep herself upright. No, she tells herself, no getting cold feet now. Not when you've come this far. Not with so much at stake.

Stubbornly, she raises her chin, and takes the black cube back into her hand. She runs her fingers over its cold surfaces, much as her father did, pausing with her thumb just above the button. She takes a deep breath.

"Death is before me today," she whispers, and doesn't know whether it is funny or sad. "I'm coming home."

And her thumb comes down.

*************

"I don't see why we can't just kill them." 

Darla is walking in furious circles around Drusilla, who is braiding the hair of Miss Edith, version 108.

"She'll know," Dru says, "and she won't come back."

"So what?" Darla screams. She can still taste Slayer blood on her lips, and she hungers for more. She also hungers to see the expression on William's face when Anne takes her last breath. But Dru is forcing her to fast.

Darla takes a deep, unnecessary breath and forces herself to regain her composure. "I appreciate your need to be thorough and all," she says, "but we've got what we came for. Granted, things didn't go exactly as planned, but I think the casualties are more than reasonable." She looks over to where William sits, his hands bound by ropes he could easily break, but won't - simply because she told him that if he did, they would kill Anne instantly. "Let's just cut our losses and get out of here."

Dru's mouth turns down into a pout. "Not without my girl," she says.

Darla sighs and kneels down beside the other woman. "Dru, honey," she says, stroking her hair like she would a child's. "She's just another girl. She's nothing special, she's not a Slayer, she's nothing. We can find another just like her somewhere else, somewhere where we don't have to live in an icky old house, and feed off the four bums who live in this hick town. The girl is inconsequential."

"No!" Dru hand flies out and cracks Darla squarely across the cheek. Darla cups her wounded face, smouldering with rage. Once, this would not be allowed to happen. But Darla is not the head of the line anymore - Drusilla is.

"No," she says again. "Her veins glow." She gets up from her chair and begins to spin, like Gene Kelly with his umbrella. And as she spins, Dru sings, "She's family..."

*************

There should be pain. But there isn't.

One minute she's human, and the next...

"Oh god," Zoe says, her golden eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. "Oh, god..."

She can feel the strength coursing through her. She's high on it. She's high on the sharpness that every object in the room has taken on. She's high on the sounds she hears: the animals outside, the furnace, the water rushing through the pipes. She's high on the way her body feels now that every bit of physical pain it suffered from has vanished like an unpleasant memory.

Zoe looks up at the mirror in front of her, and the unobstructed view of the cabinet behind her it displays, and she throws her head back and laughs.

"Why didn't you tell me, dad?" she asks the empty room through peels of laughter. "Why didn't you tell me how wonderful it is?"

And then her stomach clenches, and she feels the hunger for the first time.

Okay, she thinks. I know how to deal with this.

Carefully, she re-wraps the black cube in its nest of foam rubber and places at the bottom of her little black knapsack. She closes the trunk, giving it another kick for good measure, and walks confidently out of the bathroom.

At the top of the stairs, she pauses. She can hear voices from the living room; Roger must have woken up and is talking with Sarah. Zoe finds that not only can she make out the words far better than before, her ears alert her to their presence in other ways as well. She can hear them breathing: Sarah drawing quick, short breaths; Roger's breathing more slow and drawn out. And she can hear the blood flowing through their veins, and smell it, too. It sings to her, a sweet melody, a Siren's call. Zoe finds she is unconsciously running her tongue across her lips. She is so hungry...

Slowly, she moves a step down, and then another, and another, the call of the blood drawing her closer and closer to the cliffs.

*************

TBC


	17. Chapter Sixteen

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 17/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay, please don't hate me. I have to go away for a couple of days, but I *promise* to have the next chapter up Monday at the latest. Thanks for your patience, and my apologies.

*************

Sarah screams the second she catches sight of her.

"What's wrong?" Zoe starts to ask, but Sarah is already scrambling to find a weapon and get Roger to his feet.

"Stay away!" Sarah says, holding out a stake in a shaky hand.

"Guys, it's just me," Zoe says, wondering how they can even tell that she's done anything. Then she remembers what she's wearing. "Okay, I know the outfit's a little weird," she says, "but it's really nothing to freak out about."

She takes a couple more steps into the room, and Sarah screams again. "Get back! Get away from us!"

Roger peers around Sarah's shoulder, getting his first real look at what is making Sarah yelp. He scrunches up his nose. "Zoe?" he says, blearily. "Why are you all bumpy?"

"What?" Zoe says. And then she realizes, and her hand flies to her forehead, feeling the equally strange and familiar ridges of her demon visage. "Oh, crap." She concentrates for a second, and the ridges melt away, leaving her human face behind.

The stake drops from Sarah's hand and she stands aghast. "Sorry," Zoe says, feeling like a science experiment under her friends' stares. "I was planning on breaking it to you gently."

"Breaking it to us gently?" Sarah sputters. "That - that you're one of *them,* too? How can you break *that* gently?"

Zoe doesn't know what to say. Her hunger is proving to be very distracting.

"I mean, what is this, The Twilight Zone'?" Sarah is saying. "Is *everbody* a vampire?"

Roger raises his hand. "I'm not a vampire," he says helpfully. He sounds a little disappointed.

"Okay," Zoe says. "Is it just me, or must he have been hit on the head harder than we thought?"

"Definitely." Sarah allows herself a little laugh, and then she realizes that she has been led off topic. "But that's not the point. Since when are you a vampire?"

Zoe sighs and sits down on the arm of one of the chairs. "Since always, I think," she says. Sarah still looks confused, but Zoe doesn't really know what to say to clarify the situation, since she doesn't understand it herself. "I think I was born this way. I think that's the bit my dad left out of his story: that I wasn't born normal. So they chipped me right away, and tried to pretend that I was." She looks down at the pale white skin of her hands and remembers her dream. "But you can't hide what you are."

Sarah doesn't know what to say to that. But she reaches out and takes Zoe's hand.

"I was born with six toes on my right foot," Roger says.

Their laughter, which increases when they catch sight of Roger's dazed smile, does them both good.

And then Zoe realizes that she has been staring longingly at Sarah's neck, and her laughter dies. "Do you know what happened to the rest of the blood bags?" she asks, breaking contact and taking a couple of steps back for safety's sake.

"Oh, eww," Sarah says.

*************

Roger is watching the mug spin around in the microwave with quite a bit more interest than the experience warrants.

"Roger, you really need to snap out of it." The microwave begins to beep and Zoe moves Roger gently out of the way so she can remove the mug.

"I'm fine," he insists. "Just a little woozy..."

"You think he got a concussion?" Sarah asks as Zoe, mug in hand, takes a seat across from her at the kitchen table.

"Maybe. But do concussions make you act so weird?"

"I dunno. Maybe it's just his brain's way of dealing with..." she trails off, watching Zoe take her first sip of blood. A low moan escapes the new vampire's lips. "...All this stuff," Sarah finishes.

"Oh, God, that's good," Zoe says, running her tongue across her lips to scoop up any last drops. She can feel her forehead wanting to do *that thing.* She doesn't let it.

"May I try?" Roger asks.

Sarah gives him a disgusted look. "What? No! Eww!"

"Sure," Zoe says and pushes the mug across to him.

"Cool," he says, the same dazed look in his eyes. He takes a little sip. His eyes go wide, and for the first time in a while, clear. "Oh, eww!" The mug is slammed back down onto the table, and Roger rushes to the sink, spitting and fumbling with the faucet so he can wash the taste away. "Ick! That's disgusting!"

"Zoe!" Sarah says. "Why'd you let him do that?"

Zoe licks the remaining blood from the mug and places it casually in the sink. She slaps Roger playfully across the back. "Welcome back," she says.

Roger draws a hand across his soiled mouth. He glares at Zoe. "So what's your big plan?" he asks, angrily.

Sarah looks up from the table, her eyes big and questioning. "Yeah, Zoe. What are we going to do?"

Zoe braces herself against the edge of the counter, and looks straight ahead, her teeth clenched down tight. Her whole demeanor has changed in an instant; gone is the smallest trace of a laugh or smile. "I'm going to go back there," she says. "And I'm going to kill her."

"But if your dad--" Sarah starts to say.

"My dad," Zoe says, evenly, "was too careful. That was his fatal mistake: he was always protecting my mom, or me, or one of you. It was always a rescue mission for him. But not for me." Zoe's eyes flicker gold as she speaks. "I don't care anymore about rescuing people. It's too late for that. I just want her dead. And so I'm going to go back to that house one last time, and I'm going to kill her." She pauses, but her golden gaze does not waver. "Even if it kills me."

Roger and Sarah look at each other, and shake their heads. "We won't let that happen."

"Than you'll probably die, too," Zoe says, and she walks out of the room without looking back.

Without a word, her two friends rise and follow.

When Zoe looks up from checking the weapons in her black backpack and sees them there, a hint of a smile passes across her lips, but it dies quickly.

"You'll be on your own if you come," she says. "I won't protect you."

"We know."

Zoe looks them up and down, taking in their scuffed sneakers and ripped clothes. She sees the red marks on Sarah's neck left by Darla's cruel fingers; she sees the big purple bruise blossoming across Roger's forehead where it connected with the floor. She sees how fragile they are, and how undeserving of a night like this.

But then, did her mother deserve what has happened? Did her father? Did she?

Zoe nods solemnly at her two friends, and together they walk out that door to face whatever the night may bring them.

*************

"Well this is just sad," Darla says when she sees them. "Haven't you figured out yet that charging in here will just get you dead?"

"Somebody dead, anyway," Zoe says, and she flies at Darla's throat.

Darla rolls her eyes. "Oh, please," she says, making no effort to move out of the way. And then Zoe's fist connects with her jaw, and she reels back.

"What the hell?" Darla holds he wounded chin and stares up at Zoe, whose game face has automatically slipped on, twisting her smile into something truly terrifying.

"Surprised?" Zoe's yellow eyes flash.

"How -" Darla starts, but then everything clicks into place in her mind. So this is what Dru meant. It complicates things, surely, but it also makes them more interesting. Darla smiles. She begins to move to the familiar rhythm; Zoe catches it, and the two women circle each other, the rest of the world fading away to nothing.

"Boy, your mother must have been surprised when she went to have a baby and *you* popped out instead. Bet you gave the nurse a heart attack."

"I'm sure I did. What's your excuse?"

They come together, then, in a fury of fists and fangs that would have made a younger Spike proud. But now, William does not even watch the fight; he sits on the floor, tied back to back with his wife, his eyes fixed on the shadows. He can still feel his sire's presence in the room, but he can't see her: she is hidden in the darkness, in some distant corner. And he knows she is watching, and waiting.

He hears Roger and Sarah approach, but doesn't bother to turn and face them.

"You shouldn't be here," he whispers, his eyes never leaving the shadows. "Get out, now. And take her with you."

Roger and Sarah exchange a look; they don't have to see William's face to understand. Quickly, they go to work on the ropes. Once freed, Anne's limp form sags to the floor. Roger catches her head before it hits the wood, and he and Sarah lift her up. She is surprisingly, frighteningly light, as if she has not eaten for days, as opposed to the mere span of hours she has actually gone without.

As the two teens carry her away, both of them throwing nervous glances around the huge, empty room, they just barely hear William whisper, "Thank you." And then he goes back to watching for his dark princess' return.

*************

Zoe can taste her vengeance; it is hovering before her, like a piece of ripe fruit, hanging low, ready to be plucked from the bough. She runs her tongue across her fangs in anticipation, her lips spreading into a thin smile. She can't believe that it has been this easy, nor that it could possibly taste this good.

Zoe has never had any formal martial arts training, save for two weeks of Karate lessons when she was in the seventh grade. So far, she has fought entirely on instinct, her body making the choices, not her mind. And she has found something, something fast and sharp and pure deep within herself. And now, Zoe has Darla pinned up against the wall.

The blond vampire hisses, straining against the body that forces her back against the wood, and at the small but sure hand that grips her throat more surely than a heavy chain.

"This is going to be fun," Zoe says, using her free hand to pluck a ready stake from her open bag of weaponry. She positions the deadly piece of wood above Darla's silent heart, ready to strike. "You ended my life. Now it's my turn to end yours."

Darla struggles fitfully, but it is no use: Zoe's wicked grin only widens as she brings the stake down.

And at that moment, Sarah screams.

The protective bubble that separated Zoe and Darla's battle from the rest of the world bursts, and even though Zoe promised herself, and cautioned her friends again and again that she wouldn't save them if they got in trouble; even though she knows it is a mistake the second she does it, Zoe turns to see what is wrong.

Sarah's leg has crashed through a weak floorboard, causing her to drop Anne's feet. She is startled, but unhurt; she doesn't even need Zoe's help.

But it is just the opportunity that Darla needed. With Zoe's concentration broken, she twists away as the stake falls, causing it to sink into the wall instead. And now Zoe is off-balance: all that Darla needs to knock her to the floor. Before Zoe even has a chance to react, Darla is straddling her, pinning her arms down with her thighs. The older vampire rips Zoe's bag away from her, upending it and sending stakes and knives and a small black object wrapped in foam crashing to the floor. Darla clutches greedily at one of the stakes, smiling at the weight of the wood in her hand. A look of horror fills Zoe's eyes as the stake is positioned right above her heart.

"You were right," Darla says. "This is going to be fun."

*************

TBCSoon, I promise!


	18. Chapter Seventeen

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 18/?

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm back! Sorry for the delay, and thanks to everyone for your patience.

**************

Time stops as the stake descends. Like the image in a blurred photograph, Zoe can see every position in space it has occupied in its slow route from Darla's raised hand to her own unbeating heart. And then the wood pierces her flesh, and the pain engulfs her, and she can't see anything anymore.

It's over as swiftly as it began. Yes, the pain is still there, but it is already subsiding, dissolving into a distant memory. Zoe's eyes flicker open. She looks up to where Darla kneels beside her, staring down at the younger vampire's chest, her mouth dropped open in shock. Zoe follows her gaze; there, buried firmly in her chest, is the stake. Blood dribbles from the wound, but that's where the blow's effectiveness ends.

Zoe throws her head back and laughs. "I can't believe it!" she says. "You had you're chance, and you missed! You missed!"

"Impossible!" Darla protests.

Zoe lashes out with her foot and laughs again when it connects solidly with Darla's abdomen. The blond vampire tumbles backward, crashing into the pile of discarded stakes, all of which roll away, just out of her reach.

Zoe gets to her feet. With a groan, she pulls the stake from her chest and spins it in her hand. She stands over Darla, completely in control. "It wasn't my day to die," she says.

Darla is inching away, crawling backward like a crab. Zoe halts her movement by bringing the heel of one black boot down on her ankle. It emits a satisfying crunch.

"But it is yours."

"No!" Darla pleads, too frightened to hate herself for begging, for being reduced to this. "Don't do this! I can show you things. I can help you. I can help you take revenge on everyone who's ever wronged you."

An image of Kelly and Emily, their vacant eyes staring up from a floor stained red with their blood, takes a tempting trip through Zoe's mind, but it is fleeting. She banishes the last of that urge by crunching down on Darla's other ankle.

"Sorry," she says, "but I was raised better than that."

She forces Darla firmly backward with her foot, and readies the stake. Darla fumbles about her on the floor for some weapon, any weapon, but there is nothing to be found but dust, dust and grey packing foam...

"Besides," Zoe says, "you're all the revenge I need."

Darla's hand closes around the small black cube, a flash of recognition in her eyes...

Zoe brings the stake down...

And just as wood meets flesh, Darla crushes the cube firmly within her fist, reducing it to nothing more than a mess of wire and plastic.

"Ooops. Look what I did," Darla says, and then she explodes into dust.

Zoe gets shakily to her feet. She is too stunned, too high on the fulfillment of her dream of vengeance and on her miraculous escape from death to fully comprehend the magnitude of what has just happened. Numbly, she gathers up her stakes and the remains of her only link to humanity, and places them gently in her backpack. She slings it over her shoulder, and turns to collect her father.

William is standing now, but his eyes have not left the shadows. Involuntarily, Zoe shudders; this was just the kind of thing that scared her when she was young: that space where the light couldn't reach, where anything could be lurking, waiting...

From the blackness into which father and daughter stare, a figure emerges. Her long black hair cascades down her back, and her small white hands trace patterns in the air. Zoe finds herself compelled to move forward - to support her father, she reasons. But really, she is a moth drawn to the white hot flame that is Drusilla.

"Zoe, don't come any closer," William says. But he doesn't look away, nor does he make any move to leave.

Drusilla twirls, her thin arms spinning out around her, dancing on the air, and then coming to rest draped over William and Zoe's shoulders. "My children," she says. "Do you know what mummy has sacrificed for you?"

"Leave her alone, Dru," William says. "You can't have her."

"Oh, but I can." Drusilla runs her fingers across Zoe's face; her features have returned to their human guise, but Zoe can feel the demon edging closer to the surface at the dark woman's touch.

Zoe shakes herself. "No," she whispers. Her hand tightens around her stake, still wet with her own blood and sprinkled with Darla's last earthly remains. But Dru places one cool hand over her own, and the stake slips from her grasp and clatters to the floor.

"It won't be you," Dru says. "Nor you, sweet William." She takes his hand as well. "You could never kill me. We're connected, us three, tied tight in a web of veins and arteries and tiny, tiny little capillaries. We'll always be together."

William's hand trembles under his sire's grasp, but his voice is steady. "Not anymore, Dru. Our roads diverged. We're leaving." He takes Zoe's free hand in his, so now they *are* all connected: a circle of clutched hands, William to Drusilla, Drusilla to Zoe, and Zoe to William. But then father and daughter break away so that the two of them stand together, and Dru stands, once more, alone. Slowly, they begin to back away.

"I can wait," Dru says as they walk away. Her voice sounds almost clear. "I've waited this long."

"Goodbye, Dru," William says, and he and his daughter leave that place forever.

*************

Outside, at the bottom of the hill, Roger and Sarah are waiting for them, Anne's still unconscious body supported between them. Roger lets out a whoop when he sees them, and Sarah begins to sob, joyfully. William rushes forward and takes his wife into his arms, and Zoe grabs both of her friends' hands in hers, and holds on tight. Together, as one unit, they turn and walk away, and never look back.

There is one hour until sunrise.

*************

The blinds are drawn tight across the windows of William and Anne's bedroom. Roger and Sarah are safely returned to their respective homes, sworn to secrecy, and giddy from their adventure, now that they know everyone is going to be all right. Anne is asleep in the bed, having woken, briefly, once William and Zoe got her home; she sipped the water and soup they brought her, gratefully, before nodding off again. Now William and Zoe sit by her side, both terrified at the thought of letting her out of their sight.

They ought to be more concerned about waking her, as the volume of their voices continues to escalate the more they talk.

"You shouldn't have done it," William is saying. "It wasn't worth the risk."

"You're my parents! I couldn't just *leave* you there!" She stares him down, and he grows quiet.

"I didn't want you to have to do..." He hesitates, but she already knows what he means. "...This. I didn't want you to find out this way."

"Well, we don't always get what we want, do we?" Zoe says bitterly. She sees her father's crushed expression, and quickly amends, "It wasn't your fault, Dad."

"Yes, it was," he says, and she doesn't argue. Not about this.

William reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a crunched pack of cigarettes.

"Do you have to smoke?"

He nods, fitting the filter between his lips. "Last one," he says, lighting up. "Then we reactivate the chips, and I'll never smoke again, okay?"

A horrible heaviness settles over Zoe. "Sure," she says. "Right."

And right then, William knows. But he won't let himself believe it.

"Zoe, you are going to reactivate the chip," he says, hoping that by being stern, he can keep the fear out of his voice. "It's not up for discussion."

Zoe doesn't say anything.

"Zoe," he says, dread sweeping over him. "You do have your controller, don't you? You didn't...lose it or anything?"

She looks away. "I didn't *lose* it..."

He is truly scared now, perhaps more frightened by this new revelation than he has been by anything else that has happened this night. "What happened?" he asks.

Zoe swallows. "Darla broke it."

He wants to scream, to swear, to break something, to break *somebody.* As it is, his fists clench into tight balls, and his teeth grind into his lip. His eyes begin to water as he squeaks out, "What?"

"She broke it," Zoe says again. And then she hurries on, "But that's okay, right? Because I can still use yours, right? Right?"

"Zoe," William says, just barely keeping himself in check. "Each controller was programmed to the individual chip. Mine won't work for you."

Everything seems to grow very quiet. "Oh," Zoe says. And then, more softly, "Fuck."

William takes his daughter into his arms, then; holds her close. He runs his fingers through her hair, just as he has since she was young. He remembers his fear when they first saw the ultrasound, the ultrasound that confirmed their worries that something was *wrong.* He remembers Anne - although she was still Buffy then - forced to give birth in the back of the Magic Box, in a horrible parody of a thousand movies' "Bring water, hot water, and lots of it!" scene, with Willow playing the roll of midwife. And he remembers the moment when Willow finally pulled Zoe screaming from her mother's womb, and gave her to him to hold; and how, even though she was red, and howling, and in full vamp face, he loved her then, just as he loves her now.

"We're going to get through this," he says. "We always do."

And Zoe looks her father in the eyes, in his old, old eyes; and she says, "I know."

*************

TBC


	19. Epilogue

TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 19/19

AUTHOR: tanith

RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.

ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.

FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com

SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.

DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.

SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Wow, we've come to the end. I'm both relieved, and saddened. But hey, don't fret. Sequel coming, well, eventually

*************

Dear Roger,

I know you must be mad at me for running off the way I did, without saying goodbye. I hope you know that I would never have done it if I there had been any other choice. But there was no other choice.

As I'm sure you figured out, there were some problems with my chip, and so I'm stuck like this for a while. It would have been too difficult to stay there and pretend everything was normal: I wouldn't have been able to go to school - and I know this makes you jealous. Cut it out! - and Dad and I would have been constantly raiding Porter's blood supply...It just wouldn't have worked. Besides, we want to figure out how to fix this thing, so Mom called in an old favor, and got us a couple of leads. We're heading West now, which is pretty cool. Hey, you know how much I always wanted to get out of Vermont - now I'm travelling across the country!

The night after *that night,* my dad went off to the hardware store and bought a whole bunch of black paint and he and I coated all the windows on the Cabrio with it. Now there's just a tiny blank space on the windshield so that whoever's driving can see, and Dad and I don't have to worry about getting dusted. That's what my dad calls it - getting dusted. I'm learning all this new vampire terminology. Oh joy.

So anyway, we packed up and were gone by sunrise. Mom was still kind of out of it, and she slept for most of the day. I think talking to whoever it was she called to get information took a lot out of her; it certainly put my dad in a bad mood. He stormed around for a good half hour after she called, muttering under his breath and chain smoking. The smoking bugs me, but I understand: Dad has to stay all vampy now, too, even though there's nothing wrong with his chip. He said he wasn't going to let me go it alone. I feel bad for him; I think he got sick of the whole vampire thing a long time ago, and now he's only doing it for me. What makes me feel worse is that about half the time, I enjoy it - being a vampire, I mean. I feel strong, and powerful - things I never felt before. And people look at me differently, now: perfect strangers respect me, fear me, even. I can see how it could go to your head.

Mom and Dad are determined *not* to let it go to my head. My dad's teaching me to "control my demon." I reminded him that I *am* my demon, which I thought would piss him off, but instead he started talking about how *everyone's* got demons in them, and that ours are just a lot less subtle about it. I guess that's true, but it still irritates me that he makes me eat normal food even though I'm not hungry for it, and watch a lot of dumb TV, and do other things that my mom says "kept him rooted." I asked my dad about this, and he said that he doesn't want me to lose touch with the things that made me human. I said that was silly, and that I didn't see how I could lose those things, no matter how many blooming onions I did or did not eat, because those things were just as much a part of me as the demon - the demon's just a lot less subtle about it. This made my dad very happy, and he stopped smoking so much, at least for a couple of days.

So at night we drive, and during the day we stop at crappy motels. My Dad says it's safer this way, because there's less chance we could get stopped by some cop who noticed our out-of-state plates and didn't like our car's creative paint job. Having to explain why neither of us could get out of the car, or even roll down the windows, would be very unpleasant. Anyway, it's normal for my dad and me to sleep during the day, and my mom says she really doesn't mind; she dealt with a similar schedule for ten years when she was the Slayer.

Speaking of which, it appears I've inherited more than I thought from my mom's side of the family. Dad asked me to show him what I did to beat Darla, and I ended up totally kicking his ass! Well, okay, maybe that first time didn't count, because I don't think he was really trying very hard, but we spar quite a bit now, and I beat him at least 50% of the time. Mom therorizes that I've got all this inherent Slayer stuff, without actually being *The* Slayer. That, on top of the vamp strength makes me pretty unstoppable. (Okay, I'm bragging now. I can't help it.) Why none of these fringe benefits could have shown up while I still had to endure gym is beyond me...

While we're not driving, fighting, watching bad daytime television, or sampling the finer aspects of rural American cuisine, my parents entertain me with tales of their youths. Boy, Roger, do I wish you could hear some of the stories they tell! You would love this stuff: lots of violence and sex (the latter severely edited, of course, but I'm not stupid) - all right up your alley. I think that if we ever get all of this worked out, I'm going to write all these stories down and try to get them published. I'd have to pretend they're fiction, of course; but I swear, I'll blow Anne Rice out of the water.

I wish I could give you a better idea where we're going, but my mom and dad have become incredibly paranoid. My dad blames it on the guy my mom called: apparently, he works for some top-secret branch of the military (could this *get* any more X-Files?) and now they're most likely after us as well. By "as well" I mean that Drusilla is probably still following us, so now we're on the run from the government *and* my dad's psychotic sire.

I take it back: this isn't an Anne Rice novel in the making, it's a sitcom. All we need is a wacky neighbor.

I just re-read that last paragraph, and I guess this is proof of how twisted my sense of humor is getting.

Damn. I really didn't want to get into this, but I think that there are some things you need to know. I'm not the same person I was - and I'm not talking about just the obvious physical stuff. Emotionally, I know I've changed. How could I not? I mean, I'm on the run in a Cabrio, for Christ's sake. So, I'm still me. But I'm different, too.

What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that I don't want you to hold on to some idealized version of me, because, at this point, even an un-idealized version of Then-me may not be an accurate version of Now-me. And it's not fair for me to expect you to hold on to something false. Now don't get me wrong: this is *not* a Dear John letter. I'd love to be selfish and ask you to wait for me; but that's exactly what it would be: selfish. I have a lot of crap to work through right now, and it would be wrong of me to expect you to hang around, twiddling your thumbs, while I do it. Especially since, as much as I don't like to think about it, there's always a chance that I may *never* be able to sort through this crap, in which case you'll be stuck waiting for a very long time. And that would just *suck.* Someone as great as you shouldn't be wasted.

You're my best friend, Roger. We've been friends for a very long time, and we were just recently getting to experiment with being something more. I wish we'd had more time. But who knows, you know? Life is full of surprises - we've certainly learned that in the last week. We'll see what happens. But just know that I love you, okay? Don't ever forget it.

Take care of Sarah for me.

Love,

Zoe

P.S. Don't forget to take off your socks.

*************

She is sitting on the swing in the late afternoon sun, her arms hanging lazily at her sides. Her feet trace circles in the gravel. Suddenly, she is seized by the desire for momentum, and she kicks off, her hands moving up to grip the chains, her legs pumping. Higher and higher she goes, until she threatens to swing right up over the bar, to fly off into the sky until she meets the sun.

She throws her head back, and she laughs as her shadow dances on the grass below her.

*************

In a crappy motel room, somewhere in the vastness that is America, Zoe Barnet smiles as she dreams.

*************

ENDbut with sequel soon, I hope!


End file.
